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One Little Life 



MARY LOWE DICKINSON 

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NEW YORK: HUNT EA TON 
CINCINNA TI: CRANSTON &> STOWE 
1890 


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Copyright, 1890, by 
HUNT & EATON, 


New York. 


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§1 CONTENTS. 




CHAPTER I. page 

Who Sat in the Minister’s Pew 5 

CHAPTER H. 

Lively Times at the Parsonage 20 

CHAPTER III. 

Gladys Expounds a Parable 44 

✓ 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Advent of Edith Marston 63 

CHAPTER V. 

“Ernest, A Servant of Jesus Christ” 84 

CHAPTER VI. 

A Fledgling Tries His Wings 105 

CHAPTER VII. 

Mother Heart and Sister Heart 130 


4 


Contents. 


CHAPTER VIII. page 

Burglary at the Four Corners 149 

CHAPTER IX. 

Martha Gilbert’s Crosses 164 

CHAPTER X. 

Visitors at Midnight 177 


CHAPTER XL 

The Heart of the Father is Hardened.. 190 


CHAPTER XII. 

A “Friend” in Need and in Deed 206 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Mr. Gray Makes a Discovery 221 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Bright Ways Open 238 

CHAPTER XV. 

All the Loose Ends Gathered Up 253 



ONE LITTLE LIFE. 


CHAPTER I. 


WHO SAT IN THE MINISTER’S PEW. 

^L^^OTHING could have been plainer 
I than the little brick church. Money 
^ had failed before it was finished ; 
but that was so long ago that the oldest 
inhabitant did not remember when its roof 
was surmounted by its tiny white wooden 
spire. The whole edifice had an outspread 
and crushed-down look, and the steeple was 
so small that it seemed in the distance like 
a white feather in a very old broad-brimmed 
hat. It had never occurred, however, to any 
of the inhabitants of the little town of Edge- 
field to inquire why the building seemed too 
wide for its height and too long for its 


6 


One Little Life. 


width. The “ archeetect,” as old Deacon 
Jones called him, with a full-grown sneeze 
at the second syllable, had been also the 
village carpenter and undertaker, who made 
houses and coffins with a view to having 
room enough for the occupants but without 
much regard to beauty of proportion ; hence 
the “ meeting-house,” the crowning result 
of his genius, perched on its little hill-top 
as the dove-houses perched on the slopes of 
the barns. Like the dove-cotes, it was filled 
frequently with a gentle and fluttering sis- 
terhood, who made the larger share of the 
scattering congregation, composed of vil- 
lagers and the families of farmers who rode 
in on Sunday morning behind stiff-kneed 
old horses which had done their duty before 
the plows or the hay-carts during the busier 
days of the week. 

Among the high wagons that came trun- 
dling down the dusty road on this particular 
Sabbath morning in July when our story 
opens, came also the wide, old-fashioned 
carryall from Squire Freeland’s house — 


Who Sat in the Minister’s Pew. 7 

which was dignified by the name of a man- 
sion, and held a conspicuous place near the 
summit of one of Edgefield’s hills. It had 
been rather a fine old place in the day of 
the squire’s father, who had left it — and noth- 
ing with it — to the present squire, who, grow- 
ing no richer as the years crept on, now, in 
his white-haired old age, made both ends 
meet by filling the square front chambers 
with summer boarders from New York. His 
gentle old wife gave them the full range of 
the house and grounds ; let them take care 
of themselves in home-like, easy fashion ; 
saw that the table was well filled with the 
best that her garden and the rather scanty 
market afforded ; fulfilled literally the prom- 
ise of her advertisement as to “plenty of 
fresh milk and plenty of fruit,” and, these 
duties done, left her boarders to themselves. 
The squire, on his part, climbed to the front 
seat of his old carryall on Sundays and 
drove them regularly to church ; let the 
farm-boy take the old horse and carryall 
and drive them on week-days around the 


8 


One Little Life. 


neighboring hills ; nodded and smiled when 
he met them in their wanderings over the 
fields, and, for the rest, lived as if they were 
not in the house. 

This summer the family who had taken all 
the rooms they had to spare were after their 
own hearts, in so far as they seemed to love the 
country and to love the quiet — which was the 
only thing Edgefield had to offer besides its 
fresh and tonic atmosphere, its rushing river, 
and the beauty of its forests, crossed as they 
were by many a shady road winding among 
and beyond the trees up the distant hills. 

It was no place for gay people, this quiet 
countr}^ house, and Judge ^Marston, in choos- 
ing it for his place of summer rest, had 
thought more of the needs of his invalid 
and crippled son, Ernest, who could lie all 
day in his invalid’s chair on the shady 
piazza, than of the needs of the bright 
young daughter of sixteen who was at once 
the delight of his old age and the charm of 
her suffering brother’s life. 

It was Judge Marston, from whose face 


Who Sat in the Minister’s Pew. 9 

the careworn business look had not yet been 
charmed away by his holiday sojourn among 
the hills, and his daughter Edith, who on 
this ^unday morning occupied the back seat 
of the carryall, while Squire Freeland sat 
before, whisking his whip over the back of 
the old . white horse, whose stubby tail 
seemed wholly inadequate to its duty of 
keeping off the flies. When the party en- 
tered the church service had already begun, 
and directly opposite Squire Freeland’s 
seat, at the head, in fact, of the pastor’s 
pew, sat a young girl, not so old as Edith, 
and not so fair, but with a gentle, anxious 
face and a little stoop in the shoulders which 
indicated that the burdens of life had fallen 
upon them earlier than they should. She 
looked more like an anxious little mother 
than like a girl in the bloom of her first 
fresh youth, and she had her mother’s place 
at the head of the pew, and kept a watch- 
ful eye upon the long row of little brothers 
and sisters whose heads descended in regu- 
lar steps, from her own to that of the tow- 


10 


One Little Life. 


headed boy at the extreme end, whose lit- 
tle legs, too short to reach the floor, dan- 
gled helplessly from the seat. The young 
girl suddenly became conscious of the 
eyes of the stranger seated in Squire Free- 
land’s pew, and blushed, as if in setting her 
sister’s ribbons straight she had been de- 
tected in doing something wrong. The 
timidity and self-consciousness that came 
at once from knowing herself observed made 
Edith’s one glance like a revelation to the 
younger girl. She could not have told why, 
but all of a sudden every defect in her own 
and the children’s attire, attitude, or man- 
ner became as vividly realized as is one’s 
mortification at finding one’s self, in the 
midst of a troubled dream, walking bare- 
footed into church. Suddenly she saw that 
Roger’s collar had slipped around under his 
ear ; that the baby brother had succeeded 
in comforting his fat little legs by slipping 
down both of his stockings ; that Nelly had 
her mouth full of something that she seemed 
determined to chew on the sly ; and that 


Who Sat in the Minister’s Pew. ii 

she herself was minus a pocket-handker- 
chief, having loaned it to Walter, who had 
come to church forgetting his own. To 
culminate her confusion. Tommy, the small 
boy at the end of seat, suddenly slid down 
from his perch and, with his little bare legs 
showing, toddled bravely toward the pulpit 
stairs. After him with a very guilty coun- 
tenance the little mother went, but it was 
not without considerable kicking, struggling, 
and pulling that she succeeded in coaxing 
him into a place beside herself, and beguil- 
ing him, by the whispered promise of show- 
ing him pictures when they got home, into 
something like decent quiet. Meantime 
the sermon was going on, and, lifting her 
eyes once more, she saw the bright, kind 
smile that spread over Edith’s face, and, 
taking courage, looked again. Then that 
answering something that speaks from heart 
to heart of youth, and utterly ignores differ- 
ences in station, in attire, or the conven- 
tionalities of introduction, passed from eye 
to eye and heart to heart of these two girls, 


12 


One Little Life. 


and each knew almost as well in that mo- 
ment as they knew after years of friendly 
intercourse that the other had found a 
friend. 

I doubt very much if either of these 
girls meant to be inattentive to the sermon, 
and yet when Pastor Gray had reached 
“ fourthly ” neither one of them could have 
told what “ thirdly ” had revealed. But 
Gladys was usually a good listener, and 
never having in all her life been away from 
the little town of Edgefield, and never hav- 
ing heard any man’s sermons except her 
father’s, save when he made an occasional 
exchange with some pastor from one of the 
towns beyond the neighboring hills, it was 
quite natural that she should feel that no 
sermons could be like his, and that in hav- 
ing lost a portion she had lost something 
very precious indeed. For up to the pres- 
ent time the one admiration of Gladys’s life 
had been her father. To her he seemed the 
most gifted as well as the most devout of 
men.. His sermons especially seemed to 


Who Sat in the Minister’s Pew. 13 

her most wonderful productions, and or- 
dinarily she listened with her heart as well 
as her head, and was always ready with an 
answering glance of sympathy if he chanced 
to look her way; but to-day she had been 
dreaming, and had let the better part of his 
“ thirdly ” slip. Hence she had a little sense 
of not having treated him quite fairly. For one 
of the peculiarities of this little mother-heart 
was that she not only mothered this whole 
brood of little Grays, but she felt like a sort 
of mother to Pastor Gray himself. The real 
mother of the household, whose chief occu- 
pation in life had been to tend the never- 
empty cradle, had been, since little Tommy, 
the youngest boy, was born, in such feeble 
health that she no longer came down from 
the upper chamber in the parsonage. And 
between caring for her with such loving in- 
terest as only a daughter can show, and 
looking after the younger children, it was 
not strange that Gladys had almost forgot- 
ten that she was but a child herself. She 
liked all these duties, and it never occurred 


14 One Little Life. 

to her to question if they were not too 
many for her time or strength ; but the one 
duty that was her chief delight was the care 
of her father, who, being the best man she 
had ever known, seemed to her the best in 
all the world. 

If any body had suggested to her that, 
strong man as he was, her father might 
have realized that she had enough waiting 
upon the others to do without waiting 
upon him it would have grieved her sorely, 
and any change in that direction would 
have deprived her of her chief delight. It 
was she who saw that the dressing-gown 
and slippers not only waited for him when 
he came in from his visits in the parish, 
but it was her hands that made them both ; 
and made them when the time and material 
would have been more justly spent upon 
some garments for herself. It was she who 
managed for him that the fire should never 
be too hot, that his tea should never be too 
cold, that his toast should be most deli- 
cately browned, and his chop broiled to just 


Who Sat in the Minister’s Pew. 15 

the daintiest possible turn. It was she who, 
from the scraps of paper on which he wrote, 
elaborately copied out his sermons in a 
large round hand while he rested his weary 
brain in his favorite arm-chair and with his 
favorite book, the meaning of which came 
to him all the more pleasantly through the 
flavor of his favorite cigar. It was she who 
took her sewing to a low seat in the hall near 
the study-door, so that no uproarious child 
or persistent parishioner could run tbe block- 
ade during her father’s hours of study ; she 
who went with him, or more frequently for 
him, to visit the complaining or untidy sick ; 
pitied him always because of his depriva- 
tion of her mother’s presence in the home, 
and tried, as far as possible, to fill that place 
herself and at the same time to make up to 
the waiting mother up-stairs for the lack of 
companionship in him. 

But mothers’ eyes are rarely blinded, and, 
if she would have done so, she could have 
warned her daughter against becoming a too 

ready victim to that unconscious demand 
2 


i6 One Little Life. 

for constant ministry and sacrifice that had 
proved too great a strain for herself. Frail 
when he married her, Mrs. Gray grew 
weaker and weaker every year, never know- 
ing once what it was to spare herself or to 
be spared, until she lay down in her upper 
chamber to the rest that at this late day she 
could only have with its bitter accompani- 
ment of pain. As she lay there day after 
day, gazing out on the western sky, she was 
sometimes sorely puzzled whether to spare 
her child at the risk of destroying her one 
ideal ; and her reflections ended, as in wives 
and mothers such reflections are almost cer- 
tain to do, in the purpose to spare the child 
by depriving herself as far as possible of her 
attention, leaving her free to give her labor 
where it was too evident she gave her ad- 
miration and her heart. 

On this Sabbath day so loyal was Gladys 
to her father that she felt almost as if her 
inattention had wronged him. But even 
that thought could not expel from her mind 
the bright look and face of the young girl 


Who Sat in the Minister’s Pew. 17 

who had stolen away her thought. Already 
her imagination, accustomed to dreaming 
dreams of its own and making out stories 
of the lives of other people for herself, had 
run on in advance of her knowledge and 
woven a background for Edith’s face in a 
lovely home in some far-off city, and given 
her noble parents, admiring friends, and 
abundant wealth. When, as she walked 
home at the head of her little family pro- 
cession, the Freeland carryall passed her, 
and Edith’s head, thrust forward, gave her 
a cheery little nod, her heart quite forgot 
the neglected sermon and gave a great 
bound of satisfaction that now she should 
be sure to see her again. Nearly all the 
summer boarders at Squire Freeland’s made 
the acquaintance of the parsonage, the gen- 
tlemen coming to sit in the study, or taking 
long walks about the hills with her father, 
and the ladies sometimes beguiling idle 
hours by chatting by her mother’s side. If 
these new people had taken up their abode 
at the mansion for the summer, then she 


i8 One Little Life, 

should know them, and it might be, O it 
might be, that into her life, too, was coming 
the joy of having a companion of her own 
age ; one whom she could like, and one to 
whom she could open her inmost heart ! 

Was this a very peculiar condition of 
mind ? Am I making an impossible girl for 
you, dear reader? Not at all. Down at the 
bottom of the nature, before it comes to the 
age where the love of a life-time could rea- 
sonably be supposed to cross its portals, 
there is in almost every young girl a fund 
of unexpended and waiting devotion, the 
supply of which overflows the heart faster 
than life makes demand for it, and which 
has its legitimate outflow in the direction of 
a school-girl friend. Based upon imperfect 
knowledge, sometimes being only an expres- 
sion of imperfect emotional development, 
such friendships are often transient, yet the 
strength and intensity of feeling expended 
upon them are beyond the power of older 
people, long past all such enthusiasms, 
to appreciate or understand. No; let me 


Who Sat in the Minister’s Pew. 19 

take that back. The power to appreciate 
and understand is only denied to those who 
never had the experience which attacked 
for the first time the life of this country 
child this summer Sabbath day. Something 
very lovely was missed out of the life of the 
woman who, reading this, cannot say she 
remembers when the face of some other girl 
seemed to her the sweetest thing that God 
had ever made, and when she walked 
through her daily life as Gladys did, with a 
new glory in the sunshine and a new and 
tender light upon the distant hills ; when 
she thought thoughts that she would have 
been half afraid to show even to her own 
mother, lest the answer should be a smile, 
and the smile should say, ^‘You foolish, 
foolish child ! ” 






CHAPTER II. 


LIVELY TIMES AT THE PARSONAGE. 

HOSE of US who knew it once our- 
selves can understand the sudden 
dropping down of spirit on coming 
out of the land of dreams into the land of 
facts that awaited Gladys at the threshold 
of the parsonage door. No time for fancies 
now, with the decorous little procession of 
children suddenly changing into a clamor- 
ous crowd of little bipeds, all eager to fidget 
out of their Sunday manners and inspired 
by the unwonted quiet air of the church to 
the freest exercise of every limb. Hungry 
as bears, and, notwithstanding all her gentle 
effort to keep them hushed and quiet, as 
noisy and almost as rough as bears, no 
wonder they drew Gladys somewhat rudely 
back into the region of the commonplace 
and the real. 



Lively Times at the Parsonage. 21 

“Hush, Tommy; don’t bang your chair 
down upon the floor,” she said, gently, as 
they gathered around the dinner-table. 

“Let go, Tom, I’ll pull it,” said Willie, 
reaching out a helpful hand. 

“ No, no; I’ll pull it myself! ” cried Tom, 
in a voice that showed the next breath 
would be a howl. 

“ O, ’fore I’d be a cry-baby! ” broke in 
Walter, who was the tease of the household. 
“ Why don’t you let Willie help you ? ” 

“ No, no ; pull it myself,” repeated the 
stubborn baby of the family. 

“ Never mind, Willie, let him alone,” said 
Gladys ; “ there, that’s right ; there, Nelly, 
help him up into his place.” 

And Nelly, seizing the fat little man by 
the arms, lifted him to his seat, notwith- 
standing all the hinderance that his strug- 
gling little legs could possibly make. Once 
in his place, the other children clattered into 
theirs with great alacrity, while Gladys put 
a quieting touch on one and said a gentle 
word to another. In vain had she striven 


22 


One Little Life. 


to teach them to come gently and quietly 
when the meal was served. So nervous was 
the father, and so sensitive to the racket 
they made, that in order to spare him she 
had tried this new method, of getting them 
all in their places before he should be called. 

Run, now, Nelly, and tell father dinner 
is ready,” she said. 

And Nelly slipped from her place and 
came back in a moment, followed by her 
father, who glanced abstractedly and some- 
what austerely around the little group as he 
placed himself at its head. Gladys, who 
was always on the watch for an outbreak, 
kept one eye warningly upon Walter while 
her father said grace. The amen was not 
uttered before Nelly broke forth, 

“Gladys, Gladys, wont you make Walter 
behave ? ” 

“Walter, what are you "doing?” said the 
pastor, abstractedly. 

“ Nothing, sir.” 

“O, what a story! He is, too; he is 
pinching.” 


Lively Times at the Parsonage. 23 

“Wasn’t, either,” said AValter, sturdily; 
“just feelin’ of the sleeve of her dress to see 
how thick it was. And, papa, don’t forget, 
it’s my turn to have the wish-bone of the 
chicken.” 

I don’t think you’ll get it unless you be- 
have better,” said Nelly, whose arm was still 
smarting. 

“ He had it last week, when it wasn’t his 
turn,” broke in Roger. 

“ You wont any of you have it,” said the 
pastor with some decision, “unless you keep 
quiet.” 

“I want it,” put in Tommy; “’taint 
ever my turn.” 

“ Hush, children,” said Gladys, gently. 
“It is Walter’s turn; and don’t you remem- 
ber Willie had it last Sunday, and he told 
us what he wished ? ” 

Of all the children Willie was the only 
one quiet and retiring in nature, enough 
like Gladys’s own self to make him specially 
dear to her. At the mention of his wish his 
face brightened, and he gave back an an- 


24 


One Little Life. 


swering smile to Gladys, while the color 
mounted up to his temples. 

“ What did you wish ? I forgot,” said 
Walter, with his mouth very full. 

“ I wished mamma would get well, so as to 
come down to dinner with us,” said the 
child, gently. 

“Well, she didn’t,” put in Walter, whose 
masterful spirit was always ready for a con- 
tradiction or a denial. 

“ No, I know she didn’t yet,” answered 
Willie, hesitatingly; “ but may be she will.” 

“I don’t want her to,” said Tommy. 

“O, Tommy,” said Nelly, “don’t want 
mother to get well ! ” 

“ Don’t want her to come down to 
dinner.” 

“ Why not ? ” asked Willie. 

“Because when she has her dinner I have 
my dinner again.” 

“O my! what a greedy, greedy boy!” said 
Walter; “teasing away his sick mother’s 
dinner! ” 

“ Didn’t tease it away. She gives me a 


Lively Times at the Parsonage. 25 

nice little bit. I didn’t even ask her 
for it.” 

“ O, no ; only stood round and looked 
hungry.” 

At which rebuke Tommy, feeling as if he 
was in disgrace, suddenly set up a howl. 

“Walter, why can’t you let that child 
alone ? ” said the pastor, who had been 
carving the chicken, with a face so ab- 
stracted as to give one the impression that 
“ Thirdly and lastly, brethren,” was still upon 
his mind. 

“Aint touching him.” 

“Go away from the table,” answered his 
father, sternly. “ I’ll teach you better than 
to answer back in that insolent way.” And, 
startled into obedience, but with a very 
willful and sullen face, Walter stole away 
into the kitchen. 

“ It does seem to me, Gladys,” said Mr. 
Gray, petulantly, “ that you might manage 
these children so that I could have a little 
peace in my own house.” 

“ I do try, father,” she answered, coloring 


26 


One Little Life. 


painfully, “and I don’t think they mean to 
be bad ; I don’t know how it happens, but 
they seem to forget to try just when I most 
want them to be still.” 

“Hush, Tommy,” she added; “Nelly, 
take him down and put his chair round 
here by me. There, there’s nothing to cry 
for; Walter did not hurt you.” And she 
took from her own plate and began to cut 
for him the tender bit that her father had 
sent to her. 

“ There, now, you shall have something 
olf sister’s plate.” 

But hardly was he comforted when a crash 
and a cry from the regions of the kitchen, 
where Walter had withdrawn himself, brought 
them all to their feet.” 

“What is the matter now?” asked Mr. 
Gray, looking most aggrieved. 

“ I don't know,” said Gladys, hastening 
through the pantry to face Huldah, her 
hired help, who, with a very red face and 
angry voice, was giving Walter what she 
called “a piece of her mind,” at the same 


Lively Times at the Parsonage. 27 

time that she was vigorously mopping with 
a towel his Sunday suit, which was be- 
smeared from neck to knees. 

“ I declare, it’s enough to try the patience 
of Job, that boy is,” she broke forth. 
“ There’s my batter pudding, the very one 
your father likes, that stood up so light and 
nice, just as flat as a flapjack, on account 
of that rampageous boy. And there’s five 
plates all smashed to smithers, this minute, 
on the hearth! And there’s the pudding- 
sauce spread all over his jacket. I declare, 
it’s too much to put up with.” 

Notwithstanding Gladys closed the door 
the voice penetrated to the dining-room. 

“ Never mind, Huldah, don’t be so dis- 
turbed,” said Gladys, seeing that in Hul- 
dah’s excitement she was rubbing the sauce 
into the cloth instead of rubbing it off. 

How did it all happen ? ” 

“ The Lord only knows,” answered Hul- 
dah, angrily. “I didn’t see it; but if it is a 
possible thing to turn things upside down 
while a body’s back’s turned that boy will 


28 


One Little Life. 


do it. If he was my boy he would get a 
good whipping and be sent to bed.” ' 

Huldah, Huldah, don’t speak so,” said 
Gladys, excitedly, while Walter clinched his 
little fist and shook it defiantly at the maid’s 
back hair. 

“Well, I aint your boy, and you wont 
give me no whippings,” he broke in angrily. 

“Well, if she dosen’t I will,” said Mr. 
Gray, appearing in the door-way. “ What 
is the meaning of a disturbance like this ? 
It is strange that I can have no peace even 
on the Lord’s day.” 

“ I don’t know yet, father, what the trouble 
is, but I’ll find out,” said Gladys, apologet- 
ically. 

“Well, all I know about it,” said Huldah, 
“ is that I left the pudding and the sauce 
and the plates upon the table and turned my 
back one minute, and the plates were all on 
the floor and the sauce all on the boy and 
the pudding flat as a pancake, and that young 
one did it. He makes me more trouble than 
all the rest of them put together.” 


Lively Times at the Parsonage. 29 

Huldah, will you stop talking and take 
in the rest of the dinner,” said Gladys, de- 
cidedly, at the same time instinctively turn- 
ing around, till she stood between the naughty 
boy and his father. 

“ How did it ever happen, Walter ? You 
certainly would not throw over the sauce 
and throw the plates on the floor.” 

‘‘I didn’t mean to; I didn’t mean to,” he 
put in, putting up his little hands as if to 
shield his head from an expected blow. “ O, 
the pudding stood up ever so high, just like 
the little smoky mountain there is in the 
jography, and I just reached my hand over 
to push it a little, and see if there was a hole 
on the top, and the leaf of the table tipped, 
and the plates and the sauce went down, 
and it all went down but the pudding. The 
pudding didn’t fall, papa ” — as if that fact 
would prove an appeal to his father. 

“That’s just what the pudding did,” said 
Huldah. “ Never a pudding stood up lighter 
than that did the minute before I turned my 
back on it.” 


30 One Little Life. 

“You’ll get no dinner to-day,” said the 
father. “ March away to your room and to 
bed; and if you don’t turn over a new leaf 
there’ll come a day of reckoning for you.” 
And the pastor returned to his seat at the 
table with a much aggrieved and injured 
air, though how much of the injury to his 
feelings lay in the fact that his son was 
naughty, and how much in the fact that his 
pudding was spoiled and his personal com- 
fort interfered with, it would be difficult to 
tell. 

Meantime Gladys, rejoicing that the lad 
had escaped any severer penalty, hustled 
him away to the door and sent him crying 
at the top of his lungs up the back-stairs to 
bed, and returned to her place at the table, 
where the flat pudding, with remnants of 
the sauce scraped from the bottom of the 
saucepan and supplemented by a pitcher of 
cream, was partaken of in an uneasy silence. 

And if there were Sunday dinners that 
were better than this one, at the parsonage, 
I am sorry to say there were sometimes 


Lively Times at the Parsonage. 31 

those that were worse. Perhaps the very 
effort Gladys made to keep the irrepressible, 
childish, restless elements in her brothers 
and sisters in check made an outbreak more 
certain to come on this day, when her father 
was least prepared to bear it. 

I am so sorry, father,” she said, as she 
followed him into the study, and, pushing 
his arm-chair by his favorite window, brought 
him the footstool and hung his study-gown 
over the back of an adjoining chair — “ I am 
so sorry the children are troublesome to 
you. I don’t know why; but,” she added, 
timidly, “ I don’t think Walter really means 
to be bad.” 

^‘O, they have no discipline, they have no 
training,” he answered, in a tone as severe 
as if that were altogether her fault. ** It 
does seem strange that children of mine 
should show such proclivities.” 

“ But they are not bad, papa, they are 
only restless.” 

“Don’t interrupt me, please,” he an- 
swered; “the children have no discipline j 
3 


32 


One Little Life. 


they lack the care of their mother; I don't 
know but that they do as well as I have any 
right to expect, but they are a constant 
anxiety; they are selfish, ill-mannered, and 
rude.” 

‘‘Roger is a good boy, father, and I’m 
sure Nelly’s a good little girl.” 

“ I’m surprised at you, Gladys; I’m sure I 
didn’t expect that of you, that you should 
takes sides with the children against their 
father, I’m sure I’m working for them and 
praying for them day and night. I might, 
at least, have your co-operation.” 

“I am sure I do try, father,” she said, 
with faltering voice. 

“ O yes, no doubt, no doubt ; but they need 
Iheir mother ; ” and he threw himself into the 
arm-chair as if somebody were to blame 
that they had not a mother’s care and he 
were weary of the whole subject and would 
be glad if there were anywhere in the world 
a spot where he could have a little peace. 

Gladys understood the gesture and turned 
quietly away, really accepting for herself the 


Lively Times at the Parsonage. 33 

whole implied reproach that he placed upon 
her, without realizing that they were, after 
all, his children, and not her own. She 
had been so accustomed to standing in the 
breach and taking the responsibility of them 
and for them in all her mother’s illnesses 
that she was quite prepared to feel she was 
to blame for every thing that was not in 
accordance with her father’s desire. And 
when he told her that he never ceased to 
be prayerfully anxious about them, because 
she was always so herself, it never occurred 
to her to question whether for him there 
did not come pauses in his seasons of anx- 
iety and care. She turned away with a 
weary kind of heaviness in her heart, not 
because she wished he would know how 
hard she tried, and praise her for trying, 
but because she was genuinely sorry for 
him, and she felt it might comfort him to 
know. She was sorry for the little mother 
lying alone up-stairs, and she was sorry for 
Walter, crying himself to sleep, probably, in 
his bed ; but, somehow, until to-day, when 


34 


One Little Life. 


every thing in her cried out to be free, and 
pretty, and well-dressed, and like this other 
girl who had shown her in an hour what it 
was to be a girl, she had never learned to be 
very sorry for herself. And when she went 
up with Roger — whose business it was to 
take up his mother’s tray — to see that the 
dinner was all right, she was strongly 
tempted to open her burden and ask her 
mother what more and better she could do 
for her father and the children, and also 
to tell her how tired she was of trying, and 
how she wanted to live like other girls. 
But the day had been one of unusual pain 
for Mrs. Gray, and the instinct of sparing 
was so strong in Gladys that she stood 
there and talked cheerily and brightly, and 
gave no sign of all that was passing in her 
heart. 

“ What sort of a day have you had ? ” 
asked her mother, looking lovingly into her 
face. 

“O, a wonderful day ! ” answered Gladys, 
remembering Edith’s smile. “ Papa’s ser- 


Lively Times at the Parsonage. 35 

mon was good, and every body looked as if 
they liked to listen, and Mrs. Wilder and 
Mrs. Gibbs both waited to send their love 
to you ; and O we had such a lovely walk 
home! Squire Freeland’s carriage brought 
down his new boarders to-day.” 

“ An old gentleman and a young one ? ” 
asked Mrs. Gray, curiously. 

No, mother, a young girl not much older 
than I am ; and O, I am so glad ! ” 

Glad of what, my child ? ” 

“ O, glad to have another young girl 
about, and to know she is up there at Squire 
Freeland’s, and to be able perhaps some- 
times to see her.” 

So that thought was enough to make 
a happy day, was it ? ” asked Mrs. Gray, 
gently; for she read the heart of her 
child far more thoroughly than one would 
sjuppose. And Gladys blushed and turned 
away, making room for Tommy, who stood 
waiting, like the little pig that had stayed at 
home from market and was asking, with 
eyes and voice, “ Where’s my share ? ” 


36 One Little Life. 

Her mother cared for, the next Sabbath 
afternoon duty was usually the teaching of 
the children a Bible lesson — a task which 
formerly belonged to her father. Of all the 
trial hours of the week Gladys most dreaded 
this one. The one joy in it was that it re- 
lieved papa, and gave him an opportunity 
for a little nap between his dinner and tea. 
In her own heart there was such an inborn 
reverence for the Book of books that to 
sit and listen while her father explained 
its meaning would, under some circum- 
stances, have been a great delight. But 
this joy alwkys came to her as did her daily 
bread, mixed with anxiety lest her father 
should detect the restless reluctance with 
which the younger members of the family 
took their portion of the sacred word ; for 
Roger was not reverent, and was often re- 
bellious if the chapter was too long. As 
for Walter, his mischievous fingers had con- 
stantly to be watched as they fidgeted in 
and out of his pockets or handled every 
thing that came within their reach. Gladys 


Lively Times at the Parsonage. 37 

did not understand why the children were 
not interested when papa read. It never 
occurred to her that there could be any de- 
fect in the presentation ; she only felt, if 
papa could not make them like it, how im- 
possible it was for her to succeed with them. 
And the difficulty she sometimes had in 
controlling the boys and in adapting her in- 
struction to all ages from four to thirteen, 
with the fact that she could never have them 
in the study, lest they disturb her father, 
and could never have them up-stairs, lest 
they disturb her mother, made it a strain 
such as many parents would have hesitated 
to put upon a girl not yet fifteen. 

On this particular afternoon, although 
the time had come for the Bible lesson, she 
stole up first to Walter, who, instead of sob- 
bing himself to sleep, was regaling himself 
with a story-book. When he heard her 
approach he hastily clapped it under the 
coverlet. 

“ Let me see the book, Walter, dear ; you 
need not hide it from sister/* she said, sit- 


38 


One Little Life. 


ling down on the bed beside him and pass- 
ing her hand lightly over his hot cheek. 
“’Tisn’t a Sunday book/’ she said, half- 
laughing. “ I know it. It’s Robitison 
Crusoe'* 

“ Yes ; how did you guess.? ’* ' 

“ I saw it before you put it under the 
cover. It isn’t really a Sunday book; 
is it ? ” 

“ No ; papa would not let me have it if I 
was down-stairs.” 

“Then do you think you ought to have 
it when you are up-stairs.?” 

“ I don’t know ; I’ve not had any dinner.” 

“ I am so sorry you were naughty, Walter ; 
I hope you are not very hungry.” 

“ Say, Gladys, will there be any meat for 
tea.? If there is not, couldn’t I have the 
pudding.? ” 

“What pudding.? We ate the pudding 
for dinner.” 

“ O, you didn’t, did you .? Now, that old 
Huldah— ” 

“Be careful, Walter ! ” 


Lively Times at the Parsonage. 39 

“Well, that Huldah, then, made me be- 
lieve that pudding was spoiled so that no- 
body could eat it ; so that papa couldn’t have 
any, or any body.” 

“ And you felt very sorry for that, I am 
sure.” 

“ No, I only thought there would be a 
good deal left for supper then,” said he, 
frankly. “ Did they eat it all up ? ” 

“Every bit.” 

He gave a little sigh, as if at last the pen- 
alty of his sin was really coming upon him, 
and lifting his head from the pillow, sud- 
denly laid it in Gladys’s lap. She smoothed 
his hot cheeks and ran her fingers through 
the dark curls that went far toward making 
this restless little lad the beauty of the 
family. 

“ Now, this is my own little boy back 
again,” she said, kissing him, when, all of a 
sudden, she felt tears upon her hand, and 
he burst forth : 

“ O Gladys, I don’t care for the pudding ; 
I don’t care for going to bed ; but I' don’t 


40 


One Little Life. 


see what makes father so cross at me when 
I didn’t mean to be bad ! ” 

“ Hush, Walter, you mustn’t talk that 
way. You didn’t mean to be bad about the 
pudding, although you knew better than to 
put your hands on any of the food that was 
ready for the table. You knew better 
than to annoy and vex Huldah, as you really 
tried to do, and you knew better than to 
speak to father as you did in the dining- 
room. You were not a good boy.” 

“But I wasn’t very, awfully bad. Don’t 
you know, you told me, Gladys, that, if I 
wasn’t mad and I didn’t tell lies and I 
didn’t hit any body, I couldn’t be so awfully 
bad?” And I don’t get mad at all; I was 
only in fun at Tommy’s eating mother’s 
dinner ; and he does eat it every day.” 

“Never mind, dear; that is a matter for 
mother and Tommy. If you would only 
help me to take care of yourself, Walter, I 
should get on very well with the rest. But 
father is tired on Sunday, and mother is 
sick, and, sometimes — well, sometimes — 


Lively Times at the Parsonage. 41 

Walter, I get tired too, and wish somebody 
would help me to take care of the children. 
You could help me." 

“ Couldn’t take care of Roger ; he’s twice 
as big as me. And I couldn’t take care of 
Nelly; she’s once as big and half as big 
over." 

“ But you could take care of Willie, your 
twin brother. Though he’s not as large as 
you are, nor as strong as you are, he looks 
up to you and he likes to do every thing 
you do ; and he loves you so very dearly. 
And you could help me take care of Tommy, 
if you would.’’ 

“Well, I am going to, I’m a-going to. 
Now, next Sunday, you see if I don’t. I 
wont even ask for the wish-bone, and I 
didn’t get it to-day, and it was my turn. 
I’m going to be good, Gladys. Now tell 
me, can I have any pudding for Supper ? ’’ 

“Walter, do you care more for the pud- 
ding than for being good ?" 

“ No, I care for both," he said, kicking 
vigorously at the bedclothes. “ I’m hungry, 


42 


One Little Life. 


but I do mean to be good ; ” and the curly 
head rolled itself around in her lap. 

“ Then if you really mean to be good give 
me the Robinson Crusoe ^ 

“ Because it is bad to read it ? ” he asked, 
roguishly. 

“ No, I don’t think it is bad to read it, but 
it is bad to disobey your father when he 
told you not to read it.” 

“What shall I read, then.? Tell me a 
story.” 

“ There is not time ; we have to have the 
Bible lesson now. Would you like us to 
come up here and have it by your bed ? ” 

“I dunno. Roger would laugh at me.” 

“ O no, he wouldn’t ; Roger would be 
very sorry that you had to be punished.” 

“Come along, then. No, don’t you 
come ; ” and then, as she passed out the 
door, “ O yes, if I can’t have Robinson 
Crusoe y do come.” 

And so she went down to Nelly, who was 
waiting about listlessly for some one to sug- 
gest to her what to do next, and sent her to 


Lively Times at the Parsonage. 43 

call for the three boys to come to Walter’s 
room. 

“ To Walter’s room ? ” said Roger. “ What 

for.?” 

“Why, he’s very lonesome — so that he 
may read with us too.” 

‘‘All right; come on, then,” said Roger. 

“ But look here, Roger, don’t laugh at 
Walter because he has to be in bed.” 

“ Who’s going to laugh at him ? I wasn’t,” 
said Roger, though he looked rather guilty, 
as if he had been checked in some prospect 
of fun. 

Willie crept upon the bed and laid his 
little sunny head, with its crown of pale 
yellow hair, on the same pillow against the 
dark locks of his twin brother. Tommy 
put his thumb in his mouth and his fat little 
self upon his sister’s lap, and Nelly curled 
herself up Turkish fashion on the foot of 
the bed, while Roger threw himself upon 
the floor by Gladys’s side, having taken no 
notice whatever of Walter, who lay quiet, 
pretending to be fast asleep, 



CHAPTER III. 


% 


GLADYS EXPOUNDS A PARABLE. 

pastor’s custom had been to have 
the children read a chapter, verse by 
verse, in turn, and to explain its 
meaning as they read ; and, of course, 
Gladys tried to do it in his way. 

On this particular afternoon the chapter 
chosen was that which told of the prodigal 
son, and since the children, except Nelly, 
had failed to bring their Testaments it went 
rather slowly, as Gladys’s Bible had to be 
passed from hand to hand. She pointed 
with her pencil at the eleventh verse, and 
little Tommy read after her, 

“ ‘And he thaid, a thertain man had two 
thons.’ 

Then the book was passed over to Willie, 
who read, halting at every other word, 

“ ‘ And the — younger — of them — said to 


Gladys Expounds a Parable. 45 

his father, — Father, give me the portion — of 
goods — that falleth to me. And he — di- 
vided — unto them his living.’ ” 

Then Walter, waking up suddenly, seized 
the book, and, proud of reading so much 
better than Willie, rattled off, 

“ ‘ And not many days after, the younger 
son gathered all together, and took his jour- 
ney into a far country, and there wasted his 
substance with riotous living.’ ” 

And then Nelly followed with, 

^ And when he had spent all, there arose 
a mighty famine in that land, and he began 
to be in want.’ ” 

And Roger added, 

“‘And he went and joined himself to a 
citizen of that country; and he sent him into 
his fields to feed swine.’ ” 

And Gladys brought a close to the little 
circle by reading, 

“ ‘ And he would fain have filled his belly 
with the husks that the swine did eat; and 
no man gave unto him.”' 

Then, while Tommy straightened him- 


46 


One Little Life. 


self up to begin the next verse, Gladys 
asked, timidly, 

‘‘ Do you know what all this means ?” 

“ No, indeed, I don’t,” said Walter. 

_“Well,” said Gladys, “ I think it means 
that all the things that belonged to the fa- 
ther were going some day to belong to these 
boys. And one boy didn’t love his father, but 
he loved all the things his father could give 
him, and he’d rather have those things and go 
away, and just have a good time in his own 
way, than to stay right by his father’s side.” 

“ I don’t see what there w’as so very 
wicked about that. I’m sure I would like 
to travel off into a far-away country,” said 
Roger, with a little air of defiance. 

“Ah, but, Roger, he did foolish and 
wicked things, and he wasted all his father 
had given him. And then I think it was 
rather greedy — don’t you ? — to want to get 
all his share before his father was ready to 
give it to him.” 

“I dunno,” said Walter; “what did he 
give it to him for if he didn’t want to ? ” 


Gladys Expounds a Parable.- 47 

“I suppose he wanted to please him,” 
answered Gladys, timidly. A good father 
would like to do what would make his son 
happy.” 

But Walter only threw himself back upon 
the pillows with a little snort of disbelief, 
that showed Gladys, as plainly as if he had 
said it, that he didn’t think all fathers were 
like that. 

It says,” said Roger, that * when he 
had spent all, there arose a mighty famine 
in the land.’ Does that mean that the 
famine came on that land because he had 
spent all he got ? Wouldn’t there have been 
any famine if he hadn’t spent it ? ” 

O yes, Roger. What a strange ques- 
tion ! Of course there would. I suppose 
he just happened to have spent it all just as 
the famine came. Now you read on, Nelly; 
read the next four verses,” And Nelly, in 
the little district-school sing-song voice, read, 

*^^And he went and joined himself to a 
citizen of that country; and he sent him 

into his fields to feed swine.’ ” 

4 


One Little Life. 


“ I wouldn’t have liked that,” broke in 
Walter. 

“ Didn’t they have any pig-pens in that 
place ? ” asked Willie. 

“No, dear; the swine ran in the fields, 
and the man who took care of them 
and kept them from straying, and saw 
that they were fed, was called the swine- 
herd.” 

“ ‘ And he would fain have filled his belly 
with the husks that the swine did eat,’ ” 
went on Nelly. 

Why didn’t he, then, if there were 
plenty of husks there ? ” asked Willie. 

To this question Gladys gave no answer 
but a reproachful look, for she saw the effect 
of Roger’s spirit upon his usually gentle lit- 
tle brother. Meantime Nelly, in her sing- 
song monotone, read on, 

“ ‘ And he arose, and came to his father.’ ” 
And then she ventured to say, remembering 
Walter, 

“Do you think he was sorry he had been 
so bad, or do you think he only wanted 


Gladys Expounds a Parable. 49 

some of the good things that wei*e in his 
father’s house ? ” 

Walter remembered the pudding, and his 
eyes drooped; and Nelly read on, 

“ * But when he was yet a great way off, 
his father saw him, and had compassion, 
and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed 
him.’ ” 

“ How big a little boy was he ? ” asked 
Tommy. 

** O, he was almost grown up,” said Roger. 
“ I saw him in a picture, and he was 'most 
as big as his father.” 

What did his father do to him, 
Tommy .5*” asked Gladys, feeling as if in 
some way she ought to show the father’s 
love. 

“I dunno.” 

“But what do you think a kind father 
would do when his boy had gone away very 
naughty, and come back and wanted to be 
good ? ” 

“ Send him to bed,” said Walter, ducking 
his head vigorously into the pillow. 


50 One Little Life. 

“ O, Walter ! ” said Gladys, reproachfully, 
“ and you promised me you’d try to be 
good.” 

“ He kissed him,” said Nelly. 

“He didn’t kiss him; I don’t believe it. 
Fathers don’t kiss; women kiss.” 

“But in many countries fathers do kiss 
their children,” answered Gladys; “it is not 
so common in our country for men to kiss 
men and boys, but in other countries it is 
quite common, and it was the father’s 
way of showing that he was glad to have 
his son back again. He showed it in 
other ways, too. What else did he do, 
Nelly.?” 

And Nelly answered, 

“ ‘ He brought forth the best robe and 
put it on him, and shoes on his feet.” 

“ Had he come bare-footed all the way ? ” 
asked Willie. 

“Yes,” said Walter, contemptuously; 
“ don’t you remember the picture ? He had 
a petticoat on like a girl, and a crooked 
stick in his hand, and loose strings flying 


Gladys Expounds a Parable. 51 

round his legs, and great long hair — and 
every bit bare-foot.” 

“Had he worn out all his trousers?” 
asked Willie, whose sympathies seemed to 
be touched with the pitiful picture of the 
prodigal. 

“ In that country the dress is not like 
ours. The loose dress you saw in the pict- 
ure was made like the one he wore when at 
home. Now it was all ragged, like the dress 
of a beggar. What more did the father do 
for the boy ? ” asked Gladys, not daring to 
venture out too far upon her knowledge. 

“ Killed the calf,” answered Nelly, “ and 
made a supper.” 

“ What else ? What other way did they 
show that they were very glad ? ” 

“ O, they danced round, and had music 
to play,” said Willie, thoughtfully; “and 
the big brother, he was just as mad as ever 
he could be.” 

At this Nelly and Roger tittered; but 
Gladys put a warning hand on Roger’s 
shoulder. 


52 


One Little Life. 


“You should help your little brother in- 
stead of laughing at him. The older brother 
was very angry; tell Willie why, Roger.” 

“ Well,” said Roger, with an air of know- 
ing all about it, “ he was mad because he 
didn’t get any money, and he didn’t go 
away and see the other countries, and 
he didn’t get any husks to eat, and he 
didn’t get any calf killed, nor any robe, nor 
any ring.” 

“No, nor any new shoes; only just the 
same old every-day clothes he had be- 
fore. I don’t wonder he was mad,” put in 
Walter. 

“ But, Walter, don’t you think it was very 
unkind of his older brother not to be glad 
to have the younger one back again — not 
to be glad now that he was good ? How 
would you feel if you were naughty and 
ran away, and when you came back Roger 
was not glad to see you, or if he was cross 
because papa was glad to see you ? Would 
that be nice of Roger ? ” 

Walter cast his eyes down thoughtfully for 


Gladys Expounds a Parable. 53 

a moment, and Nelly, who had been very 
quiet, said, 

“ It does seem, Gladys, as if the younger 
one had a good time when he went away, 
and had all the good time when he came 
home.” 

“Yes, Nelly, but you forget the one great 
thing that makes all the difference. No- 
body can have a good time and be bad. He 
was very selfish first, to want to have a good 
time and to leave his brother at home, and 
very wicked while he was away, and he lost 
every thing he had. But the best thing he 
lost was the being good. And the older 
son, who stayed at home and did right, was 
really the one who was happy until he let 
that* wicked feeling of anger creep into his 
heart. If he had really loved his brother 
he would have rejoiced with all the rest ; 
but I am afraid even the elder brother loved 
himself more than he loved any body 
else. That’s what’s very apt to happen to 
brothers, and sisters, too, if we are not 
careful. Now, before we go down-stairs I 


54 


One Little Life. 


want you to try and tell me what little les- 
son we get out of this beautiful story of the 
prodigal son.” 

Every child was silent. 

“ I think,” said Gladys, “ that it teaches us 
that when we have been naughty we should 
be sorry for it, and go right back to our 
heavenly Father and tell him so, and try to 
be good again. And there is another les- 
son, too. What is it ? ” 

“ Not to be mad if another has a nicer 
time than we do,” said Nelly, softly. 

“ Yes, that is the lesson. Now let us try 
and see if this week we cannot all of us be 
very good, and if we are naughty to go, right 
away, and tell it to our heavenly Father and 
begin over again.” 

“ ’Taint much use beginning,” said Wal- 
ter. 

“ O yes, it is,” answered Nelly, encourag- 
ingly. “ I always begin every Sunday morn- 
ing, and sometimes I don’t do any thing 
very naughty much before — much before 
Tuesday.” 


Gladys Expounds a Parable. 55 

“ And then do you go and pray about it, 
and begin at once to be good ? ” 

“O no,” said Nelly, calmly, “ I wait till 
next Sunday before I begin again. I have 
a real good time for all the rest of the 
week.” 

With a little gesture of despair Gladys be- 
gan to show Nelly the great mistake of such 
periodicity in repentance ; but Tommy be- 
came so restless — and Walter asked if it was 
not almost supper-time — that it* convinced 
the little teacher that it would be well to 
defer her labors until some time when she 
could have Nelly alone. 

And this little lesson was not unusual in 
its type. All Gladys's heart was in it. She 
often stole up to her little chamber, which 
adjoined her mother’s room, so that she 
might be easily summoned to the invalid’s 
side in the night, and, kneeling by her little 
white bed, told her heavenly Father of the 
difficulties she found in acting as a spiritual 
guide to the«e little ones intrusted to her 
care. She honestly did her best ; and if she 


56 


One Little Life. 


failed to give sound instruction she did not 
fail in impressing upon them the fact of her 
own tender love and watchful care, the ef- 
fect of which it was impossible for them not 
to feel. She managed to give them each a 
squeeze or a kiss as they clattered down- 
stairs, and put her arm around Roger as she 
gave him her Bible to carry back to her 
room, saying, “ I depend upon you, Roger, 
to help me with this little class ; ” and then 
giving her attention to Walter, who, under 
promise of very good behavior, was allowed 
to dress and prepare himself for tea. 

The tea-hour passed with rather more 
than usual quiet; the pastor himself was 
rested, and his prayer seemed to open to 
Gladys the very gate of heaven. -After 
which, when the little ones were put to bed, 
her mother comforted and prepared for the 
night, and Nelly and her father gone to 
evening service, the girl had the first mo- 
ment of the day that she could really call 
her own. And what did she do with it ? 
Calling Huldah, and asking her to look 


Gladys Expounds a Parable. 57 

after her mother, if she should need her at- 
tention, she took a straw hat from the rack 
in the hall, and, wrapping a little shawl 
about her, went out into the sweet evening 
air. 

A mile at least up the road lay the white 
house of Squire Freeland. A little ascent 
in the road a hundred yards or so from the 
parsonage door would let her see the chim- 
ney, the upper windows, and the trees. She 
walked on until in one of those windows she 
saw a gleaming light, and all the weariness 
of the day passed out of her mind. And as 
she stood there and gazed at it, and then 
went slowly back to the house, she con- 
versed in imagination with the utmost ease 
and freedom with the unknown friend whom 
she had seen for the first tinie that day, and 
before whom, if she had been by her side 
at this moment, she would have been both 
bashful and dumb. 

And that same night fidith Marston, 
with a white fleecy shawl thrown about her 
shoulders and over her head, was standing 


58 


One Little Life. 


on Squire* Freeland’s piazza, chatting now 
and then with her brother or with her fa- 
ther, who was sleepily watching the lazily 
curling smoke from his cigar, and now gaz- 
ing away toward the village, where, in the 
bright moonlight, she could distinctly see 
the little spire upon the village church. 

“ Look, father ; you see the outline of 
that white house just through the hollow 
yonder. Is not that the parsonage that we 
drove past to-day on the way home ? ” 

“Yes, and that troop of children we saw 
on the walk must belong there. They were 
all in the pastor’s pew.” 

“ O yes, and the oldest of them all was 
such a lovely girl, Ernest ! I have not seen 
so sweet a face for many a day,” she said, 
turning eagerly toward her brother, who was 
reclining, as usual, in his invalid’s chair. 
“ I want to know her, papa ; for really it is 
going to be very dull here, I fear. I looked 
all over the congregation, and I didn’t see 
another interesting-looking girl.” 

“Well, I am glad, for your sake, that you 


Gladys Expounds a Parable. 59 

saw even this one, Edith, for I must say the 
outlook is not enlivening for you, with no 
company except a lazy brother like myself,” 
said Ernest, playfully. “ I should presume 
she would be very glad of a companion 
too,” he added. 

“ I think she would,” answered Edith, 
cheerfully. ‘‘We just bobbed our heads at 
each other, and I just smiled at her and she 
smiled at me ; and I am going right down 
there to-morrow afternoon, and I want you 
to go too, papa.” 

“ Is not that rather early ? Don’t you 
think we would better wait to see if the 
minister doesn’t come to see us ? ” 

“ No, papa ; that is just the kind of a girl 
to stay away, and imagine, because I came 
from the city, I would not care to become 
acquainted with her.” 

“ Well, it is very nice to find a modest girl 
anywhere,” said Mr. Marston, playfully. “ I 
have no doubt you will find her worth half 
a dozen of your city friends.” 

“What’s she like ? ” asked Ernest. 


6o 


One Little Life. 


“ Like ? ” said Edith. “ Like a white ban- 
tam chicken, with soft, clean feathers, and a 
whole brood of little chickens about whom 
she is very anxious. She just clucked about 
among those children in the most motherly 
fashion. I confess that I, who make such a 
piece of work taking care of one brother, 
don’t see how she can possibly take care of 
three or four.” 

“ Her brothers are not all invalids, I 
hope,” said Ernest. 

“ No, indeed ; it is very easy to take care 
of an invalid,” she answered, bending over 
him and giving him a hearty kiss ; ‘‘but all 
brothers, I would have you to know, are not 
as lovely to care for as is mine.” 

Ernest put his arms around her and pulled 
her down to a seat at his side. 

“But I have been thinking, Edith,” he 
added, more carefully, “that it is hardly 
right for me to allow you to give up your 
summers to be by my side, when all the 
world to which you belong is so bright in 
other places.” 


Gladys Expounds a Parable. 6i 


“ The world to which I belong is just 
here, my dear fellow ; and if you imagine 
that I could be happy anywhere else than 
beside you, when these summer vacations 
come, you have made a great mistake. It 
is hard enough while I am at school ; I am 
only hoping that papa will not send me to 
college, but will let me stay with you alto- 
gether.” 

“ A plan which I shall discourage with all 
my might,” he added. “But while you are 
here make the most of the one girl that the 
neighborhood seems to afford. And, by the 
way, perhaps you can coax some of these 
little brothers of hers to come up and make 
company for me.” 

“ O, you wouldn't want them ; they’re just 
children. They could not do any thing for 
you.” 

“Perhaps I want them all the more be- 
cause they are children ; and there is an- 
other side to it — possibly I could do some- 
thing for them.” 

“ O, Ernest, I wish you were not quite so 


62 


One Little Life. 


good,” said Edith, impulsively. “ I believe 
you are always thinking of that other side. 
I am afraid I forgot that I could do any 
thing for that sweet-looking girl. I only re- 
membered what she could do for me.” 

“ But that was only for the moment, 
Edith. As soon as you know her you can 
be trusted to find the other side. And the 
getting over on to that side where ^^e con- 
sider what we can be to other people with- 
out counting what we can gain from them 
is really the only thing worth striving for. 
But the wind is rising, girlie, and I shall 
have to be wheeled away to my nest.” 

And his father rose and came forward 
and pushed the invalid’s chair to the door. 



CHAPTER IV. 


THE ADVENT OF EDITH MARSTON. 


(7j|[||jY0NDAY was the busiest and the 
if dreariest of all days at the parson- 
V age; and this particular Monday 
came with a light drizzling rain, just enough 
to prevent Huldah putting on the line 
the unlimited array of little jackets and 
shirts and pinafores that swelled the weekly 
wash at Parson Gray’s. In such a rain 
Tommy must be kept in the house, lest his 
favorite malady, the croup, frighten them 
out of their wits; and his presence home 
from school, with his constant demand to 
be interested and amused, added greatly to 
the work that on Monday fell to Gladys’s 
share. To make things harder, her mother 
had had a bad night and required much at- 
tention. Huldah, whose stock of patience 

lasted fairly well if the children were kept 
5 


64 


One Little Life. 


out of her way from Tuesday morning till 
Sunday night, was invariably cross on Mon- 
day. The dinner must be warmed over 
from Sunday’s repast, and the minister was 
under the weather on Monday, and gloomy 
under it, too, even when the weather was 
bright and fair. The older children were 
starting back to school, while the uncleared 
table still stood in the middle of the dining- 
room; and Tommy was crying at the top of 
his lungs because Huldah had removed the 
sugar-bowl beyond his reach, while Edith 
Marston, instead of approaching the closed 
front door, came up the side porch and 
rapped at the glass door which opened di- 
rectly into the dining-room. And here Gladys, 
descending the stairs with her mother’s tray 
in one hand, holding her apron full of scraps 
and papers in the other, with her hair tum- 
bled and tossed and her collar slipped around 
under one ear, met face to face her friend 
of yesterday. For a moment no wonder 
the poor child was abashed, but at the next, 
placing her tray on the table, untying the 


The Advent of Edith Marston. 65 

apron and laying it with its contents upon 
a chair, she went forward with that instinct- 
ive ladyhood that belongs to some natures 
notwithstanding all disadvantages of circum- 
stance or environment. 

“ I am afraid I disturbed you,” said 
Edith, looking down from her greater height 
upon Gladys’s flushing face. “ I should 
have gone to the other door, but I met a 
little boy — your brother, perhaps — who said 
‘ sister was just in here.’ ” 

“It does not matter,” said Gladys, quick- 
ly, “except that this room is very untidy. 
On Mondays I have no ^one to help me, 
and to-day I have been more than usually 
slow.” 

“ Papa told me that I must not come to- 
day; indeed, he hinted that I must not 
come at all ; but I told him that the sum- 
mer was too short and the girls too few, and 
I must come down and tell you how glad I 
am.” 

Gladys raised her eyes. 

“ Glad of what ? ” she said, simply. 


66 


One Little Life. 


“ Why, glad I saw you ; glad I found 
there was another girl.” 

“ O, there are ever so many girls about 
here,” said Gladys, laughing. 

“Not just about here,” said Edith; “not 
so near as you are, and not so nice.” 

“ Not so near, but a great deal nicer,” an- 
swered Gladys, laughing. 

“ That may be, but I wanted to see you^'" 
said Edith, frankly. “ Every day when the 
weather is fine we are going to drive, and 
if it is clear to-morrow we would like you to 
go with us, my brother Ernest and 1. You 
know all about these lovely roads and hills, 
and it would make it so much pleasanter 
for us if you could go.” 

“ I am afraid,” said Gladys, hesitating, 
and yet most happy in the prospect — “ I am 
afraid I ought not to take the time, Monday 
and Tuesday are such busy days, and I 
must not leave mother alone for very long, 
you know. But I forgot, you do not know 
mother is ill; she is never able to come 
down-stairs.” 


The Advent of Edith Marston. 67 

“ O, how sad! ” said Edith, gently. “ May 
I go up and see her ? * 

“ Certainly, if you will ; I would be very 
glad, and so would she.” 

“ May I go now ? ” 

“Yes,” answered Gladys, though she 
would have been most happy if she could 
have known that Edith was coming in time 
to put her dear mother into the daintiest 
cap and the prettiest wrapper in all her 
limited store. Probably there never was a 
girl who felt more conscious than did Gladys 
of every element of disorder in the house 
that day, though with her sensitiveness was 
blended that degree of good sense that did 
not allow her to make apologies for that 
which it had been impossible for her to 
avoid. She led the way, without showing 
her inward misgivings, to her mother’s room, 
and the invalid’s bright, gentle eyes seemed 
to take in at a glance the real spirit and 
character of this frank, sweet girl who bent 
above her, saying, 

“ O, I am so sorry you are sick, and I 


68 


One Little Life. 


wish you would let me kiss you just once, 
for indeed,” and her eyes filled with tears, 
“ it makes me think so of my own dear moth- 
er, who lay ill in our home for many months 
before she died.” 

It did not take many minutes for both to 
become so interested in pleasant talk that 
Gladys slipped quietly away and began to 
put the dining-room in order. On wash-^ 
day Huldah completely filled the kitchen, 
and Gladys had just cleared the table and 
brought in a smoking pan of hot water and 
begun to wash the glass and the silver when 
Edith’s light step came tripping down the 
stairs. 

“ I hope I have not made your mother 
tired,” she said ; “ but I grew tired of wait- 
ing for you to come back, and I wanted to 
see you, too.” 

“ Let us come into the parlor,” said 
Gladys, laying the towels upon the table 
behind her. 

No, indeed; let us stay here, and do, 
do let me wipe the dishes ! Where we 


The Advent of Edith Marston. 69 

boarded last summer, at a farm-house in the 
Catskills, I used to do it almost every day. 
Such a sweet woman took care of us, and it 
was hard for her to get as much help as she 
wanted, and I coaxed her to let me do it 
just as she would have done if I had been 
her daughter, or her niece. O, you needn’t 
be afraid; I know how,” she added, and, play- 
fully seizing the towel, in five minutes more 
the china was rattling merrily in the pan, 
Gladys was washing and Edith was wiping 
as fast as Gladys could wash, and they were 
both chattering like black-birds — as if they 
had known each other for at least a dozen 
years. 

By the time that Edith went home Gladys 
had forgotten her tumbled hair and washing- 
day frock, and every thing else except that 
something merry and bright and cheery had 
come singing into her life, and had set all 
her pulses, moving so gravely to the meas- 
ure of work and care, bounding with happy 
laughter and genuine girlish fun. Huldah 
was cross as ever; her father still had the 


70 


One Little Life. 


weary look that had just that touch of self- 
pity in it that held somebody responsible 
for his weariness ; the boys were never so 
irrepressibly full of mischief and noise ; 
and the dear mother seemed to need her 
every minute; and yet she went through 
all the rest of the heavy day with' a body 
that felt no fatigue and a spirit that had 
found its wings, and all the next morning 
went through with her usual occupations, 
ironing a fresh gingham frock for the even- 
ing with her own hands, happy in the pros- 
pect of an afternoon among the hills — a 
prospect shadowed only by the timidity that 
was afraid to meet the brother of her friend. 
Imagine her pleasure, then, when instead of 
the carryall, with the invalid on the back 
seat, Edith came in Squire Freeland’s old 
chaise, long unused, but which she had 
persuaded him to bring forth from the 
depths of his bam. It was a high two- 
wheeled affair that rocked and bounced like 
a cradle, and was drawn by an old sorrel 
horse that could not be persuaded out of a 


The Advent of Edith Marston. 71 

little halting trot. It needed the two young 
faces within it to redeem its hopelessly an- 
tiquated appearance. 

“ Isn’t it lovely ? ” said Edith. “ Squire 
Freeland wasn’t willing I should have it, 
but I coaxed him to let me try. If it doesn’t 
fall to pieces like Holmes’s ‘ One Horse Shay ’ 
we can have no end of fun with it. I believe 
Ernest could ride in it without hurting him, 
and I don’t see why your mother could not 
be lifted into it and take the air.” 

“Poor mother! I am sometimes afraid 
she will never go out again,” said Gladys, 
sorrowfully. 

“O yes, she will,” answered Edith; “we 
used to feel just that way about Ernest ; but 
now we keep him in the sunshine every 
minute of the time. Has your mother ever 
tried a wheeled chair ? ” * 

“Never yet,” answered Gladys, sadly, 
“though” — remembering that her father 
had told her they were quite too expensive 
for him to buy — ■“ I have sometimes thought 
she might be able to have one.” 


72 


One Little Life. 


“You must certainly try to coax her out 
into tlie light,” said Edith, gently. “ I was 
so glad to see her, and I felt when I went 
away as if I had almost seen my own moth- 
er. She talked very sweetly of you.” 

“ Mothers always do that, I believe, of 
their own children. She certainly is the 
dearest mother that ever was made, and I 
shall be so glad to share her with you when- 
ever you can come to her.” 

“ I want to come; it will do me good,” 
said Edith, gently. “ I wonder how you 
manage to take such lovely care of her. I 
try to take care of Ernest, but we have to 
have a man nurse to lift him, and there seem 
so few ways in which any body can minister 
to him. He is never willing that any body 
should spend time or strength or vitality in 
simply making him more comfortable — that 
is, we would never know he was uncomfort- 
able from any thing he says himself.” 

A little pang went through Gladys’s heart 
at the thought of her father. He never had 
a pain, however slight, or the fear that he 


The Advent of Edith Marston. 73 

was going to have a pain, or going to be 
over-fatigued, that he did not tell her, and 
let her carry the burden of it often before it 
came though he generally forgot to tell her 
when it passed away. She had thought all 
men were that way, and listened with in- 
tense interest while Edith rattled on about 
the loveliness and self-forgetfulness of her 
invalid brother’s life. 

“ He was not always lame,” said Edith, 
growing flushed and eager over the topic 
she loved so well, “and he is never willing 
that I should tell any body how he became 
so. But I want to tell you,” and she looked 
down earnestly into Gladys’s eyes ; “ I am 
sure you would like to know.” 

“ Yes, so I would ; but not if you think he 
would not be willing.” 

“ O, he would not mind you, I am sure; 
but he nbver would tell any body himself. 
You know, we two children were all papa 
and mamma had, and Ernest was five years 
old when I was born; that makes him twen- 
ty-one now. He was a very strong, athletic 


74 


One Little Life. "* 


boy, the first in his class, and the first in all 
his sports and games. Father was very 
proud of him, and was training him to go 
into business with himself. But after Ernest 
became a Christian he told papa that he 
thought the way in which a man could do 
the most good in this world was to be a 
physician. And after mother died father 
consented that Ernest should study medi- 
cine. He was in his second year in college 
when the dreadful thing happened that 
spoiled all the rest of his life.” 

“What was it.?” asked Gladys, her ear- 
nest face quite pale with interest and sym- 
pathy. 

“ Well, we had a summer home up the 
Hudson, and we were staying there and had 
Erne'st home for his vacation. Father came 
up every night from the city, and Ernest 
used to drive down to the station to meet 
him ; and one night in June, when a good 
many people from the neighboring places 
were waiting for their friends to arrive by 
the train, and quite a number of the vil- 


The Advent of Edith Marston. 75 

lagers were also about the station, Ernest 
was walking up and down the platform wait- 
ing for papa. On our place the farmer’s 
boy, Larry Boyle, had taken the greatest 
fancy to my brother, and nothing made him 
happier than to be about the stables and to 
take care of Ernest’s saddle-horse. On this 
day he had allowed him to ride to the sta- 
tion with him, and had left him to fasten the 
horse at a post a little distance from the 
track. Larry did this, and, instead of wait- 
ing by the carriage, started to run across 
the track to my brother just as the train 
rolled round the curve and came sweeping 
up to the station. The boy had apparently 
neither seen nor heard it, for when it was 
upon him there was still time for him to 
have cleared the track with one spring. But 
he seemed bewildered and frightened by the 
warning cry of the whistle and the great 
shout that went up from the spectators, and 
he stopped short and threw up his hands in 
the very face of the awful monster that was 
upon him. At that moment there was a 


76 One Little Life. 

rush from the crowd, and Ernest sprang 
from the platform, seized the boy, and, 
whirling him with one arm off the track be- 
yond the engine, sprang for his own life. 
A breath more, an instant, would have saved 
him ; but in that one instant the engine 
struck him and he went down, not under 
the wheels of the train, but thrown beside 
it on the track, with such awful injuries as 
led every one to think him dead. My fa- 
ther was on that train, and physicians came, 
and he lay for a long time in a little room in 
the upper part of the station before they felt 
he could be taken home without danger to 
his life. Then for months we feared he 
could never recover, but little by little, a 
breath at a time, .almost, he seemed to creep 
back to himself. That was four years ago, 
and I was only twelve years old ; and all 
this time he has been gaining slowly. But, 
though he can sit in his wheeled chair and 
be pushed about from place to place, and 
can ride in a carriage, I don’t suppose he 
will ever be able to walk.” 


The Advent of Edith Marston. 77 

‘‘How dreadful! ” said Gladys, her eyes 
filling with tears. 

“Yes, it was indeed dreadful,” answered 
Edith ; “ and yet, when you see and know 
him, he will not let it seem dreadful to you. 
My poor father has never been the same 
man since the shock of that accident, and 
it is surprising that Ernest is the one person 
who can keep the home thoroughly cheer- 
ful and bright. Papa says, playfully, that 
he comes to Ernest for his spirits; and 
surely no one else I ever knew ever had 
such an unfailing fund of cheer and bright- 
ness for every body who comes within his 
reach. Of course he has had to give up all 
thoughts of a medical or business career. 
He has only strength enough to suffer, and 
we know his sufferings are at times very 
great. But he is never idle, and papa says 
he is not sure but that he does more good 
to the poor and needy and the suffering 
than he would have done if he had been 
allowed to follow his own career. It seems 
to me that he is never idle except when he 


78 One Little Life. 

is asleep ; and I don’t know but even the 
dreams of any body as good as Ernest may 
be helpful to somebody. He writes, and 
he paints, and he feels that he has a special 
work in the world which he is trying to 
carry out day by day. When you come to 
know him he will like to tell you all about 
it — or perhaps you will detect it by seeing 
it in operation.” 

“What can it be that I should see in 
operation, ox, indeed, what could any man 
in such a situation do for the world ? ” 

“Well, I don’t know that I could ex- 
plain it all to you so that you could see 
it ; yet it is the simplest thing that ever was 
heard or thought of, and it is a work in 
which he tries to get just as many persons 
to join him as he can, only they have to be 
the right people. They have to be people 
who have been what he calls trained in a 
certain class of our heavenly Father’s 
school, and they have to get along to a cer- 
tain point of progress before they are really 
ready to enter upon this special work.” 


The Advent of Edith Marston. 79 

“ I don’t understand,” said Gladys. ** It 
all has a beautiful sound to me, but I really 
cannot think what you could mean. What 
would people have to be, or have to do, to 
fit them for such a work as his ? ” 

“ Well, I am not going to try to tell you, 
for I have not it clearly enough in my head ; 
in other words,” Edith said, “I have not 
begun really enough to live it in my 
heart to be able to make others understand 
it. But I am learning just a little, and the 
points one has to reach in order to be ready 
to begin are two.” 

“ Do tell me,” said Gladys, intensely in- 
terested, and her eyes aglow with earnest- 
ness. 

Well, first, one has to see the unseen.” 

“ That is very strange,” said Gladys, mus- 
ingly. 

“ Yes, Ernest will have to explain that to 
you himself. And, second, one has to be 
willing to think always of what one can do 
for others, and never of what others can do 

for one’s self.” 

6 


So One Little Life. 

I can understand what that means. I 
have often heard my father preach about 
that — the entire giving up of one’s self for 
the good of other people. That was the 
life that Christ lived. But I don’t under- 
stand about seeing the unseen.” 

“Well, by that I think he means some- 
thing like this : that the things we are 
apt to consider real are not the realities ; 
that spiritual realities can only be discerned 
by the spirit ; that the spiritual eye is not 
opened as the natural eye is opened, but 
only as far as we live the life of the spirit 
are we able to discern what that spirit is. 
Ernest says the gaze of the world is con- 
stantly turned toward the unreal things ; 
that those seem of importance to us — the 
outward things, like money, and health, and 
place, and influence, and position ; that the 
real things are love, and gentleness, and long- 
suffering, and all those things that the Bible 
speaks of as fruits of the Spirit.- He says 
we always want the thing that seems most 
lovely to us, and that when our eyes are 


The Advent of Edith Marston. 8i 

opened these things of God will seem most 
lovely, and then when we see them we shall 
desire them. Don’t you understand ? ” 

“ O yes, I understand,” said Gladys, 
gravely — “ I think I understand.” 

“Well, it is all lovely, you see, to think 
about and talk about ; but, after all, it is 
not so easy to live,” added Edith, eagerly, 
“ Now, Ernest lives it. I don’t pretend to. 
though I am sure it is the right way to live. 
It seems to me wrong that any one person 
should give up one’s self utterly to other 
people, for is not the person that gives him- 
self up of just as much consequence as any 
other one person that God has made ? If it 
is good for others that Ernest should give 
himself up for them, why is it not good for 
Ernest that some of them should give up 
their lives for him ? And if the best thing 
is for every body to sacrifice himself for 
others, and that is the best way to live, why, 
some have to be sacrificed in order to give 
the others an opportunity to live their best. 
And then again,” said Edith, going on, with 


82 


One Little Life, 


her cheeks coloring, “ I have seen some- 
times, in families where one person gave 
herself up entirely to the service of the 
others, and while she may grow saintly in 
doing it " — here Gladys turned her face 
away and looked out over the hills — “I 
have seen the others grow constantly more 
exacting and more selfish. So what did her 
good was a means of doing them harm.” 

“Well,” said Gladys, trembling, her mind 
turning swiftly to the condition of things in 
her own home, “ I don’t think any thing of 
that sort happens very often; do you ? ” 

“ Yes, indeed, plenty of times,” said Edith, 
stoutly ; “mothers do that constantly, mak- 
ing their children helpless and selfish ; and 
now and then daughters do that, making 
their fathers helpless and selfish. Don’t 
think I am trying that way with mine ; on 
the contrary, it pleases my father to indulge 
me, and I like to think it does him good to 
be pleased.” 

And so Edith chatted on, Gladys becom- 
ing more and more thoughtful and silent as 


The Advent of Edith Marston. 83 

her new friend became more prodigal of 
words. And the old sorrel horse jogged on, 
and the chaise rocked like a ship on a gen- 
tle sea, and the afternoon glow paled a trifle 
toward sunset, and Gladys was dropped at 
her own door — a little anxious lest her 
mother needed her and lest the children 
should be noisy when they came in from 
school ; and yet underneath her habitual 
anxiety lay a wondrous satisfaction in having 
had such companionship and such thoughts 
and such talk as it had never before in all 
her life been her privilege to enjoy. 




CHAPTER V, 


ERNEST, A SERVANT OF JESUS CHRIST. 

acquaintance so happily begun 
j ripened fast into a close friendship 
between the two girls, and indeed 
between the two families. Mr. Gray was a 
favorite of the squire, and found in the con- 
versation of Mr. Marston a refreshment 
from the outside world of people and things 
from which he had been so long debarred ; 
and the bright, happy faith of Mr. Marston ’s 
son was like a tonic breath from a new spir- 
itual atmosphere. Mr. Gray was, in his 
youth, a man of ability and of ambitions. 
The former had failed of full development, 
and the latter of any fulfillment, through a 
long series of struggles to make a harmony 
between a small salary and a large family. 
If only at the outset the balance in his own 
nature between self-love and the love for 



** Ernest, a Servant of Christ.” 85 

his wife and children had been a little bet- 
ter adjusted he would have come out sweeter 
and braver and stronger even from such 
struggles as these. But when cares began 
to harass him he began to pity himself, and, 
though he learned soon to drop the heaviest 
end of the cross of care upon the shoulders 
of his wife, and afterward upon his daugh- 
ter, he still held to the self-pity as if the 
burden were quite his own. Not that he 
called it self-pity. No one would have been 
more surprised than he to have heard that 
name given to it. In his vocabulary it was 
delicacy of nervous organization, a sensitive- 
ness of spirit that was too easily jarred by any 
friction in the outward life. Such sensitive- 
ness is usually emphatic enough to impress 
itself upon all the individuals in the home 
circle, and make them realize that the suf- 
ferer’s nerves must not be overtaxed or 
tried. And unless spiritual earthquake or 
cyclone should come to Parson Gray it was 
too late fOr him to see in his self-indulgence 
any thing but the desire to secure the best 


86 


One Little Life. 


conditions for the work he was doing, or 
fancied he was doing, for souls. But all 
this was on the inside. On the outside few 
men made a more agreeable companion for 
other men than did Mr. Gray. So there 
were long talks in the pastor’s study with 
Mr. Marston over books and men and things, 
and long walks about the country by Mr. 
Marston’s side, while for Edith and Gladys 
there came to be that daily association of 
which young people who like each other 
never seem to tire. 

Edith was at the parsonage almost every 
day, bringing her work, or the latest, bright- 
est book to Mrs. Gray’s bedside, making her- 
self a prime favorite and object of admira- 
tion to the younger children; taking hold 
cheerfully of any of the little household 
tasks that fell constantly to Gladys’s share, 
and even ingratiating herself with Huldah, 
who made her an exception to her usual 
prejudice against “ city folks,” and insisted 
on taking her into her confidence with regard 
to the ins and outs of the family life. 


Ernest, a Servant of Christ.” 87 

*‘The fact is,” she used to say, confiden- 
tially, “ that Gladys is just living her moth- 
er’s life over again. Mrs. Gray spent all her 
strength waiting upon her husband and these 
little children. Now she is sick, Gladys is 
doing exactly the same thing; and she has 
to be hands and feet for her father and 
mother, and brains and common sense for 
all the children. No wonder she is slender 
and pale; the poor child never has time to 
grow. Now you. Miss Edith, just keep her 
out with you as much as you can, and I’ll 
take care of things here at home. If they 
go wrong a little it is no matter. Your com- 
ing gives her the first good time she has ever 
had in all her life. She began to rock the 
cradle before she ought to have been out of 
it herself, and she began to be nurse and 
elder sister and drudge for all these children 
as they came along until it looks now as if 
she was never to be any thing else.” 

And Edith told all this over to her brother, 
and together they planned many a bright 
afternoon’s entertainment, and succeeded in 


88 


One Little Life. 


keeping up' a constant warfare between 
Gladys’s desire to be happy and enjoy herself 
in true girlish fashion with her friends and 
a sense of duty that forbade her ever to 
leave her post at home. But the new asso- 
ciation put a new life and spring into the 
very work that had in it headache and back- 
ache and weariness untold. Gladys alone 
knew the secret discontent that had too 
often filled her heart; but now she could go 
singing through the day. From the time 
when she first dressed Tommy in the morn- 
ing and made her mother’s room fresh and 
tidy, on through the hours when she wrote 
letters for her father in his study, then 
through the mid-day dinner and the chil- 
dren’s lessons, or planning their afternoon 
play so they should not be troublesome to 
their parents, she lived thinking of the next 
hour she could pass with Edith, either 
walking in the woods or fields or sitting by 
her side on Squire Freeland’s piazza. 

And she soon came to be as thoroughly 
at home with Edith’s brother as with herself. 


“ Ernest, a Servant of Christ.” 89 

To him she seemed just a timid child, much 
younger than her years; and since he could 
not walk about he used to read to them, 
while Edith helped Gladys with the after- 
noon mending, which she was often obliged 
to bring in order to secure the society of 
her friend. And the little talks that fol- 
lowed were pleasant for both brother and 
sister ; but they were the first peeps into 
the world of books that had ever been 
granted the minister’s daughter. True, her 
father had many books. She knew that, 
for it was her business to keep them dusted, 
and she was held responsible if one taken 
from the shelves did not find its way back 
to its own place. And her father seemed to 
her like one great book who knew all that 
was inclosed within the covers of all books; 
but her own untold desire to read for her- 
self had been stifled and kept out of sight 
as if it were something wrong. There was 
never any leisure time for reading at the 
parsonage, and her delight in hearing Ernest 
read had almost the zest of a stolen pleasure. 


90 One Little Life. 

In these rare afternoons she had her first 
taste of writers like Ruskin and Macaulay 
and Emerson. She was like a child let 
loose in a field of flowers when he read ex- 
tracts from English and American poets ; 
for, poor child, she knew nothing of real 
poetry except what she had found from men 
like Longfellow and women like Edna Dean 
Proctor in the school readers or the corners 
of weekly journals. Her father knew poet- 
ry, and often quoted it in his sermons, but 
he never had time to point out a beautiful 
passage to this hungry-hearted child. Out 
of MacDonald’s involved paragraphs she 
absorbed the spiritual truth as a bee gets 
the honey from a flower. All she heard was 
pondered over while she was at her work, 
and the rapidity with which her mind opened 
was one of those swift, beautiful processes 
that her father would have taken great pleas- 
ure in analyzing for a sermon if only he had 
had the discernment to find out that it was 
going on. Sometimes work and book were 
both dropped while Ernest talked, though 


“ Ernest, a Servant of Christ." 91 

it was only with the greatest difficulty that 
he could be made ever to talk of himself. 

“ I want you to tell Gladys,” said Edith, 
one afternoon, when it grew too dark to read, 
“about the Silent Fellowship. Do you 
know, I think that she is, of all the persons 
I know, one whom our friend would be glad 
to have within it ! ” 

“ It seems to me that she is one of those 
who never needed to join,” said Ernest, 
quickly, “ for she is within ; she is living its 
spirit already. It is only those people who 
are not living it as fully as they might who 
need the stimulant and help of fellowship.” 

“ What is it ? ” said Gladys, eagerly. “ I am 
sure I need all the helps any one can have.” 

“Well, you certainly have a right to know 
about it; but I thought Edith had probably 
told you before now.” 

“ No, indeed; did not I understand that 
the friend did not wish us to tell, Ernest?’’ 

“ You understand the principle — that we 
should do as much and talk as little as pos- 
sible ; and you understand also that it 


92 One Little Life. 

would be of no use for us to talk to those 
who are not yet ready to understand. It is 
only,” he added, turning to Gladys, who sat 
on the step of the piazza gazing up earnestly 
into his face, “ it is only a wonderful thing 
that I learned when I was lying still. I had 
to do that many years ; and I was always 
wretched, and sometimes rebellious, because 
my life was spoiled, and I could never do or 
be any thing of value in the world. It was 
then that the good angel whom we have 
ever since called the friend came to me. 
She was a woman nearly as old as our 
mother, and she and my mother had been 
friends in their early youth. She had had a 
wonderful life, with all sorts of blessings 
and all sorts of sorrow in it; but at this 
time youth and riches and many of her 
friends had passed away. Her home was in 
the city, and it was her habit to visit, carry- 
ing comfort and cheer, in the wards of the 
hospital attended by our family physician. 
There she saw him only a few days after 
the accident of which Edith tells me she 


“ Ernest, a Servant of Christ.” 93 

has told you, and of which we do not like 
to talk. The doctor chanced to mention to 
her his anxiety at my critical condition, and 
in the course of the conversation she found 
that it was the son of her old friend who had 
thus come nigh to death. The next day 
she came to us, and, seeing how sorely we 
needed her, she told us of her early love to 
our mother; and took and held by my bed- 
side that mother’s place. What blessing she 
brought to us there in that troubled time I 
could not tell if I tried all the rest of my 
life. She never left me, day nor night, until 
the danger was passed. From that time on 
for two years she came to us constantly, 
helping me to endure the long anguish and 
confinement of body, and leading me through 
the bitterness and rebellion and darkness, 
out to the place where I was willing to be 
nothing and to do nothing if that should 
prove to be my heavenly Father’s will.” 

“ But you were always patient and good, 
Ernest,” said Edith, slipping her hand into 
his. 


94 


One Little Life. 


“ You did not know, my child ; I tried 
not to show you what was in my heart ; but 
I think never a poor fellow had a harder 
time to get the better of his ambitions and 
desires.” 

Gladys nodded her head. She was think- 
ing of her own struggles, and Ernest gave 
back an answering nod as if he understood. 

“ My temperament was active,” he went 
on. ‘‘I could not bear to be useless and 
laid aside. It was a long, hard pull for the 
friend to drag me up and out. But the day 
came when I was willing to have no work to 
do ; and then she began to open before me 
slowly how my life might yet be full of very 
blessed work. Then she told me the secret 
of the gracious calm of her own existence, 
and when I murmured at being so much 
alone, even in my new thoughts and pur- 
poses, she told me how she had been for 
years alone and how she had silently and 
slowly gathered around her a great com- 
pany, a wonderful family of the children of 
God. And little by little she unfolded to 


“ Ernest, A Servant of Christ.” 95 

me the inner workings of what Edith calls 
our secret society — which is not a secret 
society except in the sense that it tries not 
to let the left hand know what the right hand 
doeth.” 

“ She did not call it a society ; she said 
we simply came into a fellowship of service,” 
put in Edith, “ and every person who came 
into this fellowship came simply on the 
ground of being a servant of Jesus Christ.” 

‘^Yes,” said Ernest; ‘‘you remember that 
passage where it says, ‘ Paul, a servant of 
Jesus Christ.’ She put in the place of the 
name of Paul the name of the new member, 
so that when I was enrolled in her little 
book it was simply as, ‘ Ernest, a servant of 
Jesus Christ,’ with a date against the name.” 

“ Then there are books ? ” said Gladys, 
eagerly. 

“ Only one, and that contains nothing be- 
yond the name and address of those whose 
.watchword is, ‘ I serve.’ ” 

“And is this friend the leader of this 


band ? 


96 


One Little Life. 


Of course to us she seems so : but her 
desire is simply to be the servant of those 
who serve. We never speak her name; 
many, perhaps most, of the members do not 
know it; but in our hearts we wanted a 
word to call her by, and among us she is 
spoken of simply, as the friend. I know her 
name. The list of members comes to me 
and through me goes up to her. She is ac- 
cessible to any member that needs her help 
or guidance, and any one of us may open 
freely to her our own need or that of others. 
When the case, in her judgment, needs her 
presence she summons or often seeks the 
person out as she sought us. Burdens are 
lifted, sorrows soothed, erring souls led God- 
ward, endless trouble taken to set crooked 
lives straight; and we know by these tokens 
that she has been there. In other cases she 
sets the wheels moving by which nearer in- 
fluences are brought to bear upon the 
trouble, whatever it may be. We have 
never yet called her attention to a life that 
did not become her special care; that did 


** Ernest, A Servant of Christ.” 97 

not become changed for the better. Yet 
nothing is forbidden except that we shall 
speak to her of her own deeds and words. 
Instead of talking of this she says, ‘ Go and 
find some one whom you can serve.* Of all 
the letters that come tome none are allowed 
to go up to her which carry words of per- 
sonal appreciation or praise. And her own 
knowledge of where the members are en- 
ables her often to send a little word or sug- 
gestion as to some spirit .to be guided or 
some bodily want that may be relieved.” 

“ You see, she had been doing this work all 
alone up to the time when she found Ernest,” 
said Edith, brightly, proudly, and then she 
has since been allowing him to relieve her.” 

‘‘To act as a sort of under-servant,” put 
in Ernest, quickly. 

“Yes, I see,” said Gladys'; “names and 
needs come back to him, and through him 
to her. What are those who belong ex- 
pected to be and to do ? ” said Gladys. 

“Well, I will tell you; though I cannot 
as could the friend herself. Of course,” he 


98 One Little Life. . 

added, after pausing for a moment, “we all 
alike feel — ^that is, those of us who love the 
Lord — that Christ left upon the earth an un- 
finished work for us to do.” 

Gladys moved uneasily on her seat, turning 
so that the western light should not fall upon 
her face ; but Edith saw the motion, and, 
throwing one hand around her shoulder, said: 

“ But, brother, let us stop just there. 
Gladys tells me that she is never able really 
to know whether she loves the Lord or not. 
Of course, she is a Christian; but she has 
never been willing to join her father’s 
church. I know, of course, that she must 
love him, because it seems to me she is try- 
ing all the while to live as he lived. But I 
thought the little society was not only for 
those of us who know and love him, but for 
those of us who want to love him.” 

“ O Edith,” said Gladys, “ I did not want 
you to talk about that.” 

“Well, I’m not going to talk about that ; 
only you needn’t mind brother any more 
than you mind me.” 


“ Ernest, A Servant of Christ.” 99 

And Ernest, seeing Gladys’s embarrass- 
ment, said, gently: 

“ Our little society is for those who love 
him, but our test of loving him is not any 
feeling that we have in our hearts about it. 
It seems to you that if you loved him you 
would feel as if you did. What he says 
about it is, * If you love me, keep my com- 
mandments.’ Obedience, and not feeling^ 
is the test of love.” 

‘‘But people can try to obey without 
love,” said Gladys, timidly. 

“Yes, but real obedience is a matter not 
of the act, but of the will, and people would 
not will or wish to obey without love. But 
I don’t believe we need talk about that,” he 
added, kindly. “ God teaches every one of 
us himself along that line. I do believe you, 
Gladys and Edith, are both willing to obey 
the Master whenever you hear his voice. I 
know you agree with me in what I have 
said before, that he has left on the earth a 
great unfinished work for us to do.” 

“ I am sure I do,” said Edith. 


lOO 


One Little Life. 


“We all do; everybody, as I said,” went i 
on Ernest, “ who loves him or cares for the 
coming of his kingdom feels that. The 
coming of his kingdom means the reign of 
truth and justice and mercy in human 
hearts. The truth and justice and mercy 
are not there, and hence we see the world 
full of suffering and sin. Now, the lifting it 
up out of that dreadful place is the work he 
most desires to see done. It is this over 
which his soul travails. Through his Spirit, 
which he sends to the heart of every one of us, 
he is trying to make us ready and eager to 
do our little share. Many of us have be- 
come ready and are eager ; we want to help, 
but we do not understand exactly how or 
where to begin. Now, while I lay still two 
or three years, just waiting and watching 
and suffering, the friend led me to become 
interested in lines of philanthropic work and 
in the many plans by which his children 
were striving to make his kingdom come. 
Studying with her I learned about churches 
and hospitals and asylums and training- 


^‘Ernest, A Servant of Christ,” ioi 

schools and plans for curing every evil un- 
der the sun. She taught me to see the good 
that could be done by all of them, and also 
to see the limitations at which their work 
must stop; that the thing Christ most wants 
is that the heart and character should be 
made better, and that, after the churches 
and institutions have all done their best, 
there remains an enormous field of heart- 
work that can only be reached by individual 
effort for the individual life. We cannot 
stand far off and preach Christ to the peo- 
ple ; we must go and live Christ among 
the people. The warm hand will not im- 
part its warmth to the cold one unless the 
two are clasped together. The loving heart 
will not reach the unloving one unless they 
meet and touch each other. This hand- 
clasping and heart-touching leads, I believe, 
to the real work which God has given many 
of us to do. For myself, shut in as I was, 
I decided that it was the only work that I 
could ever be called to do. Then I natu- 
rally wanted to do as much of it as possible; 


102 


One Little Life. 


so I entered into a little covenant with 
the Master and the friend, and was ready 
to have written after my name, ‘ A servant 
of Jesus Christ.* ” 

For a moment after Ernest paused there 
was a solemn hush of silence on the little 
group. Gladys had come up late in the af- 
ternoon, and had taken with Edith and her 
brother their early tea, leaving for almost 
the first time the children to be put to bed 
by Huldah, and passing her first evening 
with her friends. All through the twilight 
hush the talk had gone on and on, and now 
that it was over it seemed as hard for them 
to go back to light and playful chat as if the 
talk had been a sermon and the silent porch 
the sacred house of God. Gladys kissed her 
friend in silence and Edith went in to tell 
her father, who was going down to have a 
chat with Pastor Gray, that Gladys was 
ready to go home. As she waited in si- 
lence, Ernest, leaning back in his chair with 
closed eyes, looked too white and weary to 
speak another word. But when she ap- 


“ Ernest, A Servant of Christ.” 103 

proached to tell him good-night he looked 
up into her face and said, with a smile: 

“ I am sure you belong to this fellowship 
Gladys, and I want to send up your name 
to the friend. May I do it ? ” 

“ O, I should like it so much,” said 
Gladys, eagerly, “ if only — if only I could 
be sure.” 

“ Sure of what ? ” asked Ernest. 

“ Sure that I loved Him and belonged to 
him,” she said. 

But at this moment Edith appeared with 
her father, and she turned away without giv- 
ing Ernest a chance to reply. Yet as she 
walked down the road, hardly heeding Mr. 
Marston’s pleasant talk, under the whisper 
of the leaves she kept hearing another Voice 
make answer, the Master’s voice whispering 
to her soul and saying over and over again 
the solemn words to which Ernest had pre- 
fixed his name. And when she had looked 
in to see that the children were asleep, and 
talked with Huldah about the next day’s 
work, and made her mother comfortable for 


104 


One Little Life. 


the night, she went into her little room, and, 
throwing herself on her knees at the bed- 
side, said, softly, 

“ I, Gladys Gray, a servant of Jesus 
Christ.” 

“ The peace that passeth understanding ” 
was hers. 





CHAPTER VI. 


A FLEDGLING TRIES HIS WINGS. 

f AYS passed before they met again. 

It was no easy thing for Gladys to 
w secure an afternoon; but day by day 
she was pondering all she had heard in her 
heart. Life went with unusual bustle and 
friction at the parsonage. Roger, who was 
next herself in years, startled her by spring- 
ing all at once from the little boy she had 
considered him to a self-asserting and de- 
fiant young man. He had always been in 
the habit of telling her his little difficulties 
with his father, and his little rebellions 
against authority, in a loving and confiden- 
tial manner, and almost always she had 
been able to suggest and coax and soothe. 
Now he seemed sullen and defiant, even to 
her ; and the secret of his defiance revealed 
itself in a visit from the village school- 


io6 One Little Life. 

master, who called one evening just at tea- 
time to inquire why, for the last two days, 
the lad had not been at school. The fam- 
ily were at supper when he came, and the 
teacher was shown to the study, where the 
minister joined him. Two minutes later 
Mr. Gray opened the study-door, and 
sternly bade Roger to come in. 

“ What is the matter, Roger ? ” said 
Gladys, laying her hand on his arm as he 
passed her chair. 

“ O, nothing,” he answered, with a toss of 
his head, “only the last two days I have 
been — a-fishin’.” 

If he had struck her in the face the child 
could not have surprised her more. 

“O, Roger, what a dreadful thing!” she 
said, the tears springing to her eyes. 

“ It was not a dreadful thing at all,” he 
answered, angrily. “I. hate school and I 
hate that master, and I’m ahead in all my 
classes, and I’m tired of sitting there all 
these fine days, and I’m not going to be 
ordered about any longer.” 


A Fledgling Tries his Wings, toy 

‘‘But why did not you tell father so, 
Roger ? ” 

“ What good would it do ? He would 
not let me stay at home.” And, hardening 
his face against the reproof that he knew 
awaited him, he passed in at the study-door. 
When he appeared again his countenance 
was flushed and angry, but his father fol- 
lowed him, saying, complainingly : 

“ I cannot understand how any one could 
be so ungrateful as Roger has shown him- 
self to be to a father who is straining 
every nerve to keep him at the best school 
the place affords. The right thing to do 
for such a boy is, of course, to put him on 
some farm at work ; but I have decided to 
give him one more trial and one .more 
chance to redeem himself at .school.” 

How much of this unusual leniency was 
due to the presence of the school-master, 
and how much to the earnest prayers that 
had been going up from Gladys’s heart dur- 
ing all the interview, no one could tell. The 
storm had blown over for the time. The 


One Little Life. 


io8 

severest penalty seemed to be averted, but 
Gladys carried a very heavy heart. Very 
wearily she went about her work next 
morning, gladdened and surprised in the 
midst of wiping the dishes by the appear- 
ance of Walter with a letter just brought 
from the post-office with his father’s mail. 
She gazed, puzzled at the unfamiliar hand- 
writing, for she had no distant friends, and 
very rarely in her young life had she ever 
received a letter. Suddenly she opened it 
and glanced at the signature, and read, 
“ Thy friend, a servant of Jesus Christ.” 

Putting it hastily into her pocket, she 
finished her work and ran up to see if her 
mother needed any thing, and then, running 
out to a favorite seat in a rustic corner un- 
der an apple-tree, opened her letter and 
read. And as she read the three short 
pages, that seemed to her like a message 
sent from God through this unknown 
friend, she felt as if a new mother-heart, 
strong and loving, a heart in which she 
could hide and cry, a heart on wffiich she 


A Fledgling Tries his Wings. 109 

could rest, a heart in whose guidance she 
could trust, had come and taken unseen the 
seat beside her. Poor child ! Her arms 
had been around every body, holding up 
and carrying all burdens, and secretly hat- 
ing her load. Now loving arms seemed 
around her and helped her to her first real 
sense of the Everlasting Arms. All the 
morning she had been burdened with a sense 
of being quite alone with her problem of 
what to do for Roger and these other little 
ones who seemed committed to her care. 
She could not make her mother suffer with 
her anxiety, nor must she trouble her fa- 
ther ; and now all that loacf seemed lifted. 
It was as if a message had been sent to her 
from God himself, assuring her that other 
hands were under her burden and that other 
hearts were ready to love and watch over 
and care for these who were her own. 

Seeing Squire Freeland’s carryall pass the 
door on its way to the village, Gladys hur- 
ried through all her duties of the day, and 
confiding to Huldah that she wished to see 


no 


One Little Life. 


Edith and her brother, bade her lie in wait 
and stop the sorrel horse on its return. 
When Huldah called out that she saw him 
coming Gladys ran out with her little work- 
bag on her arm, containing three or four 
pairs of socks for the children, and, reach- 
ing up her hand to Squire Freeland, said: 

“ Please take me home with you ; I want 
to have a little chat with Edith and her 
brother, and to get back in time for the 
children’s tea.” 

Fifteen minutes later, seated on the upper 
step of the piazza, with darning-needle and 
one of Walter’s socks in hand, she lost no 
time in asking*Ernest to put aside his book. 

“I don’t wish to hear the reading this 
afternoon,” she said. “ I want to hear more 
about the silent fellowship and more about 
our friend. I have had a letter from her — 
the loveliest, most wonderful letter! and O, 
Ernest, I am so glad now that you sent my 
name to her. I have been thinking so 
much,” she added, lowering her voice, 
gravely, “ about the covenant you said you 


A Fledgling Tries his Wings, hi 

made with the Master and with your friend. 
Tell me more about it. Could you put it 
into definite words ? And could you tell 
me just what you felt and what change it 
made in you, and how you began to 
work.?” 

“ I had no definite formula of words, but 
I promised to cultivate the spirit that longs 
to see others better and happier — that is, a 
human interest in other people, so that I 
should really care to know about their lives 
and their welfare, and love to take trouble 
for them. The dear friend told me 
that in order to do this I had only to 
keep my eyes open ; that every human be- 
ing is interesting if you think of him as a 
soul dear to the heart of God. If what he 
has been or what he is is not interesting, then 
what he may become is so. 

Having gone so far as to pledge myself 
to try to be interested in people just as I 
found them, I added to my covenant that I 
would be a friend to them wherever and in 

whatever way they had need of friends. 

8 


I 12 


One Little Life. 


Of course, all my life and all my relations 
to other human beings became changed 
from that moment. Formerly I had felt 
that I had no responsibility except for here 
and there a soul that I particularly liked 
and that seemed to belong to me. Now I 
feel that each and every soul that comes 
near enough to my life, so that I can touch 
and influence it, belongs to me, and is part 
of God’s garden given to me to beautify 
and help to blossom and bear fruit.” 

“ And is that the reason,” asked Gladys, 
eagerly, “that you were interested in Roger 
and Walter, and even in little Tommy? Is 
that why you asked me if they might come 
up here and let you get acquainted with 
them ? Did you think that perhaps you 
could help them to be good ? ” 

“It is just that,” answered Edith, eagerly. 
“To Ernest they are not the minister’s boys, 
nor even your little brothers, but little creat- 
ures whom his Master loves; and because 
they are here, and because Ernest is here, 
he feels God brought them together and that 


A Fledgling Tries his Wings. 113 

he must love them and make them love him, 
and that through that love he will be sure 
to help them to be good.” 

“Well, perhaps that is a fair way to put 
it,” said Ernest. “ I certainly do feel that 
if all the world belongs to Christ these boys 
are his also ; that the sooner his kingdom is 
set up in them the greater power for good 
they will be when they are men. And the 
way toward that setting up of his kingdom 
is for somebody that loves and believes in 
him to influence them by making them feel 
that love.” 

“It is wonderfully good of you to be 
willing to help,” said Gladys, gently, remem- 
bering how, through her letter, she had 
been made to feel God’s love for her, and 
so to forget to worry because she couldn’t 
feel her love for him. “ I couldn’t have ex- 
plained it, but something of that sort I had 
felt myself about them : that it did not mat- 
ter so much if I failed sometimes to keep 
them perfectly clean, or to have them well 
taught — or even to keep them well and 


114 


One Little Life. 


healthy; but I have felt I must on no ac- 
count fail in keeping them true and good. 
I don’t succed very well, but O, I am so 
grateful that somebody else will help ! ” 

There was a sad quiver in her voice that 
betrayed both to Ernest and his sister the 
fact that she was more than specially anx- 
ious about her boys. Detecting this, Ernest 
showed the true delicacy that did not ques- 
tion her about them ; he only said : 

“O, you will find plenty who will be will- 
ing and happy to help. Don’t feel you 
have got to bring up the little brothers all 
alone. And now,” seeing the tears start in 
her eyes, ‘‘ though I don’t want to seem to 
be preaching, I do want to tell you a little 
more about the principle on which our si- 
lent fellowship is based. First, we must 
claim the human beings who come within 
our influence as our own, at least so far as 
to feel that we have a right to love them, 
and to choose from among them some one — 
at least, not every body, and not too many 
at once, but one to whom ,we may give our- 


A Fledgling Tries his Wings. 115 

selves in service. You see, it means a life- 
work ; for, whatever other work we do, this 
work of personal helpfulness to one and 
then to another must be first, and must be 
the one work that never is allowed to stop. 
You see, too, that the work we mean to do 
cannot yet be done in circles or bands or 
organizations ; not even by the usual church 
services; it must be direct, personal, in- 
dividual work. And whenever we find a 
Jieart that sees the work as we see it, and is 
ready to enter upon that kind of service to 
other lives, we ask it to enter into a little 
bond of fellowship with us ; and that is what 
Edith calls our ‘secret society.’ ” 

“ Is that its name ? ” asked Gladys, 
quietly. 

“ It has no name — that is, no name that 
has ever been put on paper. It has no con- 
stitution and no outward form of organiza- 
tion, no special motto, and no badge. We 
call it in our hearts, as I told you, a ‘ fel- 
lowship of service.' It is, in so far as all 
talking about it is concerned, a secret serv- 


ii6 One Little Life. 

ice ; and it is done, of course, for the love 
of Christ. Sometimes those words, used as 
a sort of talisman, reveal those who are one 
with us, and sometimes we meet and part 
and remind or warn each other with the 
little watch-word, ‘ I serve.’ ” 

“ But how can you know each other ? ” 
said Gladys. 

“We do not need to know each other, 
since we have no conventions and no re- 
ports and no meetings. We can wait for 
heaven for that. Our work is invariably a 
work of one for one. One soul becomes the 
interested, loving, helpful, friend of another, 
and never feels its mission for that other 
ended until it, too, has seen its responsibil- 
ity and is willing to take up the work of 
friendly helpfulness for some other in its 
turn. When the friend began she was 
alone, and for a long time remained alone, 
becoming the personal friend to as many 
needy hearts as could be crowded into her 
life; then as the spirit sprang up, or, already 
existing, was recognized, in a new life many 


A Fledgling Tries his Wings. 117 

more entered into the fellowship, and I kept 
their names for her. And as the circle 
widens each member gives to the new mem- 
ber, who, through his influence, has come 
in, my name and address, to which the new- 
comer sends his own, which, through me, is 
passed onward to the friend, and thus we 
know in what part of the field a worker or 
a sufferer may be found.” 

“And are there no rules,” asked Gladys, 

“ by which beginners may be taught ? ” 

“ Rules do not teach. The beginner 
must in every case be taught of God.” 

“ But one person cannot help every body 
who comes within his reach.” 

“ No, that is not expected ; but out of 
those who do come within his reach he can 
always be helping somebody ; and one 
helped shall take another, and so no day of 
life shall pass without some one’s receiving 
this blessed service of love. But I must ' 
have wearied you,” he exclaimed, suddenly, 
remembering that the afternoon had passed 
while he was talking. “ It is very rarely 


ii8 One Little Life. 

that I try to talk it out to any one ; but I 
wanted you to understand the true spirit of 
the whole matter. Our friend would tell 
me that I talked too much.” 

“ I don’t think so,” said Edith, quickly; “for 
you have not talked about yourself. I would 
like to take my turn at telling Gladys that.” 

“ Not so, little girl,” answered Ernest, 
affectionately ; “ that is not in accordance 
with the spirit. The more silent we can be 
about it the better. The record is written 
on hearts and lives, and it is enough that 
the Master knows it all. Even we three will 
hardly need to talk of it again, I think, for 
Gladys knows now all that we know, and is 
already one of us.” 

And as Gladys, who did not like to leave the 
children to Huldah at their tea-hour, went 
hastily down the long line of wooded road that 
led from Squire Freeland’s to the parsonage, 
again the voice in her heart preached 
its own little sermon to her. It was not so 
long as Ernest’s, but tenderer and more 
solemn, and its application was very close 


A Fledgling Tries his Wings. 119 

to her own immediate need. This inward 
voice was saying many things to Gladys in 
these latter days, and it seemed as if a gen- 
tle hand had swept away a veil that had 
been hanging between her eyes and her 
own heart. She knew she was a very faith- 
ful girl to her duties; she knew she carried 
great burdens of care; she knew her life 
deserved all the praise it received for her 
persistent and painstaking industry in the 
home. And it did receive a good deal. All 
the parish praised her; Huldah never lost 
an opportunity to tell how good she was ; 
her mother whispered it into the ear of her 
neighbors; and the model held up for all 
the young girls of the parish was little 
Gladys Gray. All this she had long known. 
She knew now, in the light that was break- 
ing day by day upon her spirit, that there 
had been quite another side to all this, which 
no one but herself and God had seen. Out- 
wardly she had been every thing most loyal 
and beautiful and faithful. Inwardly her 
spirit had often been chafing and fretting. 


120 


One Little Life. 


as if she were a little prisoner chained to an 
unwelcome task. She had wondered why 
God gave other girls time to enjoy them- 
selves and there was never any time for her. 
She had questioned the goodness of God, 
that would let her mother lie year after year 
a suffering invalid, and bind her to a nurse’s 
post at her bedside, when there were so 
many, many things for a girl of her age to 
enjoy. She had wanted to study books, 
and she had been forced to wash dishes. 
She was very susceptible to the ministry of 
solitude, and even her little white bed had 
to be shared by her younger sister; and 
until Edith came she never knew what it 
was to take a walk without Tommy or 
Willie tagging along at her heels and ex- 
pecting her to tell them stories or to minis- 
ter to their little lives, while her own was 
dwarfed and starved. She wanted pretty 
clothes, and the best she had were her moth- 
er’s long laid away frocks cut down. She 
wanted people, and with the exception of 
her father’s scattered parishioners, whom she 


A Fledgling Tries his Wings. 121 

had known ever since she was born, she 
knew nothing of the world. She had done 
her duty; indeed, she had seen no way of 
escape. But instead of the “charity that 
suffereth long and is kind ” hers had been 
of the type that had suffered long and made 
believe to be kind. Like a revelation this 
vision of herself had begun to be opened to 
her on the night, after her previous talk with 
Ernest, when she knelt by the bedside and 
was ready to be a servant. It meant that 
henceforth in serving all these in the home 
circle she hoped to be serving Him ; that 
hereafter she would put the spirit of love, as 
well as the act of love, into her daily life. 
It was this that made her lay a gentle hand 
on Roger’s arm the night before, as she saw 
him going into the study angry and excited. 
It was of this spirit that she was saying, 

“ O if I only had had it all the time! Roger 
did love me ; I might have influenced him ; 
but many times when he needed me I felt 
I could not make room for him in my life ; 
and many times since Edith came I have 


122 


One Little Life. 


left him to himself, when I knew he would 
have been happy and safe with me, that I 
might enjoy myself with her. If any harm 
comes to Roger I shall have done it.” 

And, alas! already harm had come to 
Roger; for when she reached home, and the 
children gathered around the table, the 
elder brother was not there. 

“Where’s Roger asked Mr. Gray, in a 
tone that held her responsible for his ab- 
sence. 

“I don’t know, I am sure; he was home 
at dinner, and I asked him to look after 
the little boys while I was away.” 

“Well, he never didn’t take care of us so 
much as a minute,” broke in Tommy, with 
his mouth full of cake. “ I asked him to 
make a kite and a boat for me, and he said 
‘better believe he wouldn’t.^ ” 

“ No, he didn’t play with us one single 
bit,” said Walter, ready to add his mite of 
condemnation. “ He went up-stairs to his 
own room, and I guess he read Robinson 
Crusoe all to himself.” 


A Fledgling Tries his Wings. 123 

“ Perhaps he is up there now/’ said 
Gladys. ‘‘Willie, run quick, and see.” 

In a minute the little fellow came clatter- 
ing back. 

“ No, Gladys, he isn’t there ; but his 
every-day clothes are on the floor, all up in 
a little heap.” 

Seriously alarmed now, Gladys left the 
table and ran up to Roger’s room. Sure 
enough — there lay his well-worn school 
suit, and his Sunday suit was gone from 
the closet in which it had hung. Over- 
come with apprehension for a moment 
Gladys dropped upon the side of his bed 
and covered her face with her hands 
trying to think. 

What could it mean ? How could she 
ever tell her mother ! What would the 
parish say when it was known that the 
minister's eldest son had run away ? All 
these things followed quick in the train 
of the one dreadful thought that was 
like a blow to her. What evil influence 
was at work in his life of which she 


124 One Little Life. 

did not know ? And into what sin and 
what danger had her little brother fallen ? 
Then Tommy’s step on the lower stairs 
aroused her. There was no time for her 
to grieve. They were all disturbed and 
waiting for her below. As she lifted her 
head wearily Ernest’s words came back to 
her: ^‘All the world belongs to Christ, and 
these boys are to be his also.” ^‘Surely,” 
she said to herself, “ if that is true, then he 
knows where Roger is, and he is watch- 
ing over him; and though he may let him 
suffer from his own mistake yet Christ 
will not let his own be lost. God has his 
servants every-where, and wherever he is 
some one of them will help me find him.” 
Comforted and strengthened she went back 
to her father and said, with a voice already 
quieted: 

“ Roger is surely gone. He may have 
dressed himself and gone to tea somewhere 
with some of his schooLboy friends; but I 
never knew him to do such a thing without 
speaking of it. I cannot help feeling that 


A Fledgling Tries his Wings. 125 

he has gone away not meaning to come 
back.” 

“ I don’t think it’s possible,” said Mr. 
Gray, astonishment getting the better of an- 
noyance and anxiety. ‘‘ He had no money 
and no experience. He would not know 
where to go. I suspect, if he tries that 
little game, that he will come trotting 
back again as soon as it is dark. He has 
hardly ever slept under any other roof in his 
life.” 

I’d like sleeping out-doors under the 
hay-mows somewhere, father; I think it 
would be great fun,” put in Walter. 

But* his father took no notice. 

“ Then you are not very anxious ? ” asked 
Gladys, watching Mr. Gray’s face. 

I am not very anxious, but I am very 
seriously displeased,” replied the minis- 
ter. “He has not been a good boy of 
late. The school-master told me that 
at school he seemed inclined to associate 
with the son of that wretched Richard Gil- 
bert.” 


126 


One Little Life. 


“ Who’s he, father ? ” 

“ The family have only lately moved into 
that old house on the marsh on the out- 
skirts of the town. The man has no ap- 
parent business, but works now and then at 
odd jobs, wherever he can get them — that 
is, when he is sober enough to work at any 
thing. And this son is a bright boy enough, 
but evidently ready for any thing that is 
mischievous. I have seen Roger with the 
boy about the street, and I told him once 
he had better bring him with him to the 
Sunday-school. I never dreamed that 
Roger would associate with him in any way 
that would give the lad any influence over 
him.” 

^‘What does the teacher say about him?” 
asked Gladys, to whom the very name of 
Gilbert was new. “ I did not know he ever 
had any such companion.” 

“ He was the boy who persuaded Roger 
to play truant. The teacher says they 
came from the city, and the lad knows a 
great deal more of evil than he ought to 


A Fledgling Tries his Wings. 127 

know. I am very much afraid we shall find 
the two boys have gone off together.” 

“ What will you do about it, father ? ” 
asked Gladys, timidly. 

“O, I’m not afraid but what he’ll be back 
fast enough — before it’s time to shut up the 
house to-night. I am very sorry now that I 
passed over his truancy so lightly; he ought 
to have been severely punished.” And, 
evidently much disturbed, the pastor arose 
to leave the room. 

Don’t tell mother, papa; please don’t,” 
said Gladys, anxiously; at any rate, don’t 
tell her until after she’s taken her tea. She 
is not so well and has eaten almost nothing 
to-day, and I know she would have no ap- 
petite if she knew of this.” 

wont tell,” said Tommy. 

Now be very careful that you do not,” 
said Gladys, patting him upon the head. 

And, father,” she added, anxiously, ** shall 
you not go out and try to find where Roger 
is ? ” 

^‘No, indeed,” said Pastor Gray, flush- 

9 


128 


One Little Life. 


ing ; “nor shall I, if possible, let any body 
know that he has gone. Don’t you be 
anxious ; he’ll be back. No boy likes his 
bed better than Roger does. He might 
as well take the result of his own mis- 
doing. I shall take no steps to make it 
easy for him to get home, but I shall 
be ready to teach him a lesson when he 
comes.” 

But, however wise this course might seem 
to him, it was far from satisfying the con- 
science-stricken and loving heart of his 
child. She set Willie and Walter down to 
a picture-book which she had been keeping 
in store for such an emergency as this, went 
up with her mother’s tray herself, and di- 
verted her mind with an accout of her af- 
ternoon visit until Mrs. Gray forgot to ask 
any questions about the boys. 

She kept her eye on Tommy, keeping his 
little mouth filled by giving him mofe than 
his usual share of his mother’s supper, and 
then, when she had tucked them all away 
in bed, stopping patiently, though she felt 


A Fledgling Tries his Wings. 129 

ready to fly, to answer their questions and 
hear them say their prayers, slie told Hul- 
dah she was going out for a few moments; 
and, seizing her hat and shawl from the 
rack in the hall, she slipped out quietly 
into the gathering night. 



CHAPTER VII. 


MOTHER HEART AND SISTER HEART. 

NCE out in the silent night alone, 
Gladys paused a moment in the mid- 
dle of the road. Before her, to the 

T , ’ 

left, between the long lines of shady trees, 
lay the house where she knew, at this hour, 
Edith and her brother were sitting upon the 
piazza enjoying the beauty of the night. 
All her heart turned in that direction. To 
see them, to tell them all about it, to ask 
them what she should do, was the tempta- 
tion that beset her. But her father’s wish 
that no one should know of his boy’s mis- 
behavior restrained her ; and, after all, 
what could Edith and Ernest do to aid her.^ 
Was she not desiring the consciousness of 
their sympathy in her trouble rather than 
expecting any practical guidance ? If so, 
then she was, even in this moment of sorrow 


Mother Heart and Sister Heart. 131 

and regret, thinking of comfort for herself 
rather than of ways to save the boy. Al- 
most instinctively she had moved a few 
yards in the direction of the Freeland man- 
sion; but when this thought came to her 
she turned suddenly and walked swiftly in 
the opposite direction. It was not Edith 
nor Ernest who knew where Roger was. No 
one knew but God; no one could guide but 
God. She would do the best she could and 
trust him for the result. 

Inspired by this thought she walked rap- 
idly on past the church, whose little spire 
shone white in the moonlight; past the vil- 
lage store and the post-office — just closed, 
though the nine o’clock bell had hardly 
ceased its ringing; on past the rows of 
houses, in many of which the evening lamps 
had hardly ceased to burn ; through the 
outskirts of the village and over the bridge 
beyond, where stood the old brown tumble- 
down house occupied by Richard Gilbert. 
She was not accustomed to being out alone 
at night; but up to this moment she had 


One Little Life. 


132 

known no fear. It was as if an unseen 
Hand had begun to guide her from the mo- 
ment when she had turned away from self 
and entered resolutely upon the new pil- 
grimage which had for its end the saving 
and helping of another. Years after, in 
times of prosperity and in times of trouble, 
her mind recurred to this lonely walk ; and 
even the silent house and the shadowy 
trees and distant hills remained in her 
memory with the distinctness that only an 
intense and vivid experience creates. 

Her first touch of nervousness came 
when she entered the long covered bridge, 
which crossed the river that high up among 
the hills was rushing and turbulent, yet 
here in the meadows spread to a peaceful 
stream. This was the stream whose trout 
were a temptation to Roger, and this the 
stream that, after the rains, overflowed the 
fields on which stood the Gilberts’s home. 
The farmer who owned these fields had 
built, years ago, a new house high up on the 
ridge, leaving this rambling old place, with 


Mother Heart and Sister Heart. 133 

hs roofless sheds and leaning out-buildings, 
to fall gradually to decay under the action 
of spring floods and winter snows. When 
the new family took up their abode here the 
house had been long unoccupied, and the 
women and children who sometimes went 
to gather berries in the fields beyond it 
gave it a wide berth, remembering that it 
had been at some time the resting-place of 
ragged tramps. Once under the shady 
covered bridge Gladys remembered this, 
with a kind of terror that gave her her first 
doubt as to whether she ought to have come 
after dark and alone. 

For a moment she hesitated, and was dis- 
posed to turn back. Then she remembered 
the morning duties and cares that would not 
allow her to get away from the house ; and 
the feeling that she must know if Roger were 
here, and, if so, take him home with her, 
conquered every other thought. She moved 
briskly forward and had nearly crossed the 
bridge when she was startled by a step 
entering the bridge behind her — a heavy 


134 One Little Life. 

step, that staggered unsteadily but rapidly 
forward. At the same time a man’s voice, 
singing in drunken snatches, made its way 
to her ear. In a moment she realized that 
it was Mr. Gilbert returning, intoxicated, to 
his home. To turn back and meet him was 
impossible. Her only course was to hasten 
forward and take shelter with his wife be- 
fore he could overtake her. Stepping 
lightly, in the hope that he might not notice 
her, she sped off the bridge and down the 
road, around the corner, and through the 
little lane that led to the old brown house. 

A light gleamed in one of the windows 
of the long “ L.” Much excited, and not a 
little afraid, Gladys hastened toward this 
light. To reach the door she must pass the 
window. One glance sufficed to show her 
the room was quite empty, and when no an- 
swer came to her eager knock it dawned 
upon her for the first time that the woman 
might be gone — and that she was alone and 
at the mercy of a man too intoxicated to 
know what he was about. Already she 


Mother Heart and Sister Heart. 135 

could hear his voice, muttering and shout- 
ing as he came around the corner at the 
foot of the bridge. A few moments more 
and he would overtake her ! 

The distance was long across the fields 
to the farm-house on the hill, and she could 
not hope to go without being discovered 
and followed. The locked door gave her 
no chance to conceal herself in the house 
had she wished to do so. To go back and face 
the man was impossible. For a moment her 
fears overcame her, and the girlish dispo- 
sition to sit down upon the door-step and cry- 
seemed as irresistible as natural. Then, as she 
saw the dim outline of the staggering figure 
entering the lane, she ran behind the dilapi- 
dated wood-shed, thinking that, on which- 
ever side he approached, she could pass to 
the other and wait until he entered the 
house, and make her escape by the way she 
came. As she sped behind the building a 
faint rustle and a half-whispering, half-mut- 
tering voice from within the shed arrested 
her attention and aroused her fears. Before 


136 


One Little Life. 


she could think what to do next, a low 
voice, speaking through a broken window, 
called, 

Dick, my boy, is it you ? Come in here 
quick, if it is! Come in here with me.” 

Breathless with terror Gladys still recog- 
nized that it was a woman’s voice, and she 
answered, 

“ It’s not Dick ; it’s me.” 

“ And who are you ? ” was the sharp 
inquiry. 

“ Only Gladys — Gladys Gray. I was 
coming to see Dick, your boy. I wanted to 
find out if my brother has been with him to- 
day — my little brother Roger. He has not 
come home.” 

“ Wait a moment till I open the door,” 
whispered the voice. “ Don’t speak loud. 
Come in here. I hear my husband coming, 
and I am waiting here till after he gets 
inside the house.” 

“Don’t you want him to see you?” whis- 
pered Gladys. 

“ Not if he has been drinking very hard. 


Mother Heart and Sister Heart. 137 

He’s a good man,” she added, quickly, “but 
the bad whisky makes him wild, and when 
he has had too much of it sometimes he 
beats us and is very cruel.” 

“ I don’t think he is very bad to-night,” 
said Gladys, taking the woman’s offered 
hand and allowing herself to be drawn into 
the half-opened door. “ He is coming up 
the lane ; but he’s singing.” 

“That is all right,” said the woman, 
softly, “ if he doesn’t see Dick or me. I have 
left his supper on the table and he will take 
it and go to sleep, and in the morning he’ll 
be all right again.” 

“But are you going to stay here all 
night ? ” said Gladys. 

“O no. I’ll go in after I know he’s asleep,” 
she answered, quickly. 

And all this time, in the dim light, Gladys 
could only feel a hot hand grasping her own 
and see the shadowy outline of a bowed 
figure and a haggard face ; but the voice 
was not unpleasant, and the touch of the 
rough hand was kind. 


One Little Life. 


138 

“ You should not have come down 
here after dark alone,” whispered the 
woman. 

“ No,” answered Gladys, timidly. “ I did 
not think it was quite so far or quite so 
dark.” 

“ Hush, hush ! He’s coming now,” said 
the woman. “When he goes in and all is 
quiet I’ll take you up the road a piece 
myself.” 

And they both waited, hand in hand, 
while the staggering figure went past the 
door, and, with uncertain lurches, succeeded 
in climbing the porch and disappeared 
within the house. There was a sound as if 
the chairs and tables had entered upon an 
enforced dance about the room. A few 
shouts for wife and Dick to come and take 
off his boots, and some muttered scolding 
which soon died into silence. Then, still 
holding her by the hand, the older woman and 
the young one slipped down the lane, say- 
ing nothing until they were already under 
the shade of the covered bridge. 


Mother Heart and Sister Heart. 139 

“ Now tell me about your brother,’' said 
Mrs. Gilbert, turning back a few steps to 
take a look at the house. “ I’m always afraid 
that he’ll set the house on fire,” she said, 
as if to herself, and I feel uneasy when 
Dick is not about. Dick is not often as 
late home as this at night.” 

‘‘ I’m afraid he’s not coming home, Mrs. 
Gilbert. He has been with my brother 
Roger a good deal of late. They have been 
playing truant from school and going fishing 
together. My brother’s best suit of clothes 
is gone, and I am afraid the two boys have 
gone away together. Do tell me if you 
know any thing about it.” 

“ Not a word,” said the woman, in a voice 
full of anxiety. “ My Dick is not a bad boy, 
though people may think so because we live 
down here in the hollow and his father will 
not let the drink alone. Yet Dick is*not a 
bad boy. He knows how much I depend 
on him, and I don’t think he would run 
away without letting me know.” 

“ I hope he hasn’t done it,” said Gladys, 


140 One Little Life. 

pitifully, for she detected at once that this 
sorrowful woman’s heart was bearing just 
such a burden of love for her wayward boy 
as was slowly waking in her own for the 
child who had gone astray. 

“ Though I don’t think it is strange he 
shouldn’t want to stay here,” added Mrs. 
Gilbert, lifting her calico apron to wipe her 
eyes. “ Every body looks at him and thinks 
of him as a drunkard’s son; and I am so 
poor that I cannot keep decent clothes on 
him, and he’s ashamed among the other 
boys at school. If the father isn’t right it 
isn’t of any use for women to expect to 
hold the boys. I’ve done the best I could 
for mine,” she added, and behind the apron 
Gladys could see that the woman’s lips 
quivered, and her voice trembled as if she 
were trying to control her tears. 

“ But I have not done the best for mine, 
Mrs. Gilbert,” said Gladys, drawing near to 
her, yet wondering at herself that the should 
be willing to speak so freely to this poor 
soul. “ I have not done the best I could 


Mother Heart and Sister Heart. 141 

for Roger, but I mean to when I get him 
back again.” 

“ I cannot see how a child could go wrong 
with such a father and such a sister,” an- 
swered the woman, sadly. I know what 
it is to have been respectable, too. My 
father was a minister ; but then he was one 
of the strict, harsh kind. He never let us 
take a walk or read a story-book or laugh or 
talk on Sunday ; and we were kept so straight 
that when I married Mr. Gilbert I was glad 
of a chance to get away from home.” 

‘‘ My father is not like that,” said Gladys, 
gently. “ He is very good to us all, and 
Roger has no reason to go away; and yet 
Roger is not a bad boy either. I don’t know 
what’s the trouble, but if I get him again I 
shall try to make him happy in his home.” 

“ I don’t believe they’re gone,” said the 
woman, eagerly; “your boy might do it 
without telling you, but I know Dick better. 
I shouldn’t wonder if when you got home 
you found your brother there; but if you 
don’t, and I don’t find my boy, you mustn’t 


142 


One Little Life. 


be troubled ; for Dick will never leave me 
to worry about him long. Whatever else 
may be wrong about him I can trust his 
love for me.” 

And Gladys felt that, notwithstanding all 
her misery, the poor mother had a confidence 
and comfort greater than she could claim 
for herself. Then, suddenly remembering 
in whose care her brother was, her new im- 
pulse of loyalty led her to say : 

“ I can’t rely on Roger’s love for me, Mrs. 
Gilbert ; but that is not his fault. I have 
been so busy that I have not kept him lov- 
ing me, and I have not kept myself loving 
him as I ought to. But I know that God 
loves all these boys and wants them to be 
good men. I know he is thinking about 
them, and that he knows where they are 
and what they are doing, and I believe his 
love for Roger will lead him back by and by 
to his home ; but O, it is terrible to think I 
cannot find him now, and that I do not know 
what wickedness he may be led to do ! ” 

“ Not by my boy,” answered Mrs. Gilbert, 


Mother Heart and Sister Heart. 143 

with much spirit. “You may trust the 
Lord if you want to. I don’t know about 
the Lord, but I know my Dick.” 

“ But isn’t it a comfort to think that 
somebody else loves and cares for him when 
you cannot ? ” asked Gladys, eagerly ; “ that 
if his father does not watch over him his 
heavenly Father will ? ” 

“That would be a comfort if one believed 
it,” answered the woman bitterly. “ My 
father used to preach that way, but when he 
found that I was going to marry Richard 
Gilbert and go away from home he showed 
what being a father meant. He had chosen 
somebody else for me to marry, and he told 
me never to darken his doors again. That 
was twenty years ago, and all this time I 
have been having a wretched life of it, as he 
very well knows, and never a kind word or 
wish or welcome back again has his heart 
sent after me. Yet he was always preaching 
about the Fatherhood of God.” 

For a moment there rushed over Gladys’s 

mind the first little pained consciousness 
10 


144 


One Little Life. 


that had ever come to her that there was a 
contrast between the preaching of her own 
father and the living out of the true father 
love in his life. He would not, so he said, 
go after Roger; he would not even stand 
with open arms if the prodigal came back. 
But she repelled the thought as disloyal and 
unloving, and for a little while the two 
plodded along the dusky road in silence, 
and in that silence again the Voice within 
spoke softly to her, saying what it had once 
said to Ernest: “Every human soul that 
comes within the reach of your power to 
love and to help belongs to you.” And a 
sudden warmth kindled in her heart toward 
this wretched woman at her side, and she 
realized, child as she was, that, through the 
gate of her own first sorrow, God had sent 
her the first soul outside of her own family 
circle to whom she could be a friend. In 
the midst of this silence Mrs. Gilbert loit- 
ered and looked back. They had now 
reached the church, and the remaining dis- 
tance was not long. 


Mother Heart and Sister Heart. 145 

** You are not afraid now, are you ? ” she 
asked of Gladys. If you are I will go 
home with you and see if you don’t find 
your brother snug in bed ; but if you are 
not I will go back ; for when Dick comes 
home — and I think he will come to-night — 
he will be so frightened if he finds me gone. 
He never came yet and did not find me 
watching for him. If he comes to-night 
and he has seen Roger I will send him up 
to you.” 

“ O, not so late! It would be too bad for 
him to come so late.” 

“ He will not mind. I will come part way 
and wait for him beside the road.” 

“But if he does not come to you to- 
night ? ” said Gladys, anxiously. 

“ Then when he does come, or if I get 
any trace of him, I will come at once and 
tell you. But you must not come down to 
our place any more. Nothing could harm 
you if my husband was sober, but some- 
times when he is drinking other men come 
there and drink with him. It is no place 


146 One Little Life. 

for a girl like you.” And she turned her 
back on Gladys and walked hastily away. 
But a light, quick step followed her, and, 
before she had gone many yards Gladys 
had reached her, and putting her arms im- 
pulsively about her, she said: 

“ O, Mrs. Gilbert, don’t go without let- 
ting me thank you. You don’t know how 
much you have helped me. If I must not 
come to your house I want you to come and 
see me. I want to see you again ; I want to 
know you better. 

“No, you don’t,” answered the woman, 
bitterly. “ I’m not one to come near a nice 
young girl like you. But understand, my 
boy is as good as any body’s boy, if he does 
wear patched and outgrown clothes, and if 
he has not got a minister for a father.” 

“ I have no doubt you are right,” said 
Gladys, gently seizing the woman’s hand as 
she turned half angrily away ; “ but no mat- 
ter about the fathers; your boy has a moth- 
er, and our mother is very ill, and I have 
not known how to be a real mother to him, 


Mother Heart and Sister Heart. 147 

and I want you to help me with my boy, 
and to let me help you with your boy when 
you find him.” And before the woman had 
time for a spirited reply Gladys kissed her 
suddenly, turned away, and ran quickly 
along the road toward home. 

Notwithstanding her haste to get back in 
order to welcome her boy the woman stood 
in silence and gazed after Gladys till she saw 
her reach her father’s gate ; and then with 
a sigh she turned and slowly walked back 
to the old house, entering noiselessly the 
room where her husband lay in heavy sleep 
upon the floor. She lighted candles, and, 
taking one to the deserted north room, and 
the other where its flicker would shine to 
the eastward, and another to one of the 
west windows of the house, she drew a 
broken rocking-chair close to the window 
and sat down to watch for the coming of 
her son. 

And Gladys went in as softly and listened 
at her mother’s door and found her asleep ; 
looked in for a moment on the sleeping chil- 


148 One Little Life. 

dren ; and went also to Roger’s room to 
light the candle and place it in his window, 
and seat herself where its light would fall 
upon her face, so that if he, repentant, came 
in sight, he would see and know that she 
was waiting to let him in. 

And there, with more than a mile of space 
between them, and an inward distance in 
years and experience that could hardly be 
measured, each with the self same burden, 
the two women sat out the night watching 
for brother and son. Toward morning 
weariness crept over the aged frame ; and 
youth, that is stronger than grief, conquered 
Gladys, and both the watchers slept. Mean- 
time the Eye that never slumbers nor sleeps 
kept fatherly watch above the wandering 
brother and the wandering son. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


BURGLARY AT THE FOUR CORNERS. 

P to this time Gladys's life had been 
one in which nothing happened. She 
had been going through its routine of 
small duties ever since she could remember, 
making events of thoughts and incidents of 
feelings. But now the loss of Roger seemed 
to have swung wide the door through which 
trooped troubles, one crowding upon an- 
other, until sharp realities left her ix) room 
for dreams. 

Day after day went by and brought no 
news of the boy. Dick’s mother did not 
come to her, and Mr. Gray was so dis- 
pleased when Gladys told him of her even- 
ing visit to the old house that she felt it 
impossible for her to go again. As the 
days passed and the boy did not return his 
father’s mental attitude toward him grew 


One Little Life. 


150 

more and more severe and unforgiving. 
This attitude was increased by the fact that 
the blow had fallen so heavily upon the 
mother. He had left the telling to Gladys, 
and she had done it as gently as she could ; 
but the long swoon that followed her first 
knowledge of her child’s departure had been 
succeeded by attacks of so serious a char- 
acter as to leave the sufferer hanging be- 
tween life and death. Of course Gladys’s 
constant attention was required in the sick 
room. Her father had forbidden her to 
speak to any one of Roger’s departure ; and 
she was, therefore, the less sorry that she 
could grot see Edith, since she would be 
puzzled indeed to hide her trouble from her 
friend. 

Two or three days passed, however, when, 
going to the window to draw the shade a 
little closer, she saw Edith coming up the 
walk. A moment more and she had flown 
down-stairs and kissed her half a dozen 
times in true warm-hearted girlish fashion. 

“ What is the matter ? Where have you 


Burglary at the Four Corners. 15 i 

been all of this time ? " said Edith, holding 
her at arm’s-length and gazing at the pale, 
tired face. 

“ Why, mamma has been so very ill, you 
know.” 

“ Mamma so ill, and you have not told 
me ? ” 

I could not get away to tell you.” 

“And whom have you had to help 
you ?” 

“ O, Huldah ; she is every thing and does 
every thing ; she has taken the kindest care 
of the boys.” 

And so, with their arms about each other’s 
waists, the girls went, talking softly all the 
way, up to the mother’s room. To Mrs. 
Gray, Edith^s lovely ministries had made 
her very dear, and she fell at once to 
smoothing her pillows and passing her 
hands gently over the aching brow. 

“ Send Gladys away,” whispered Mrs. 
Gray, as Edith bent over her face to kiss 
her. 

“ Gladys, I’m going to take two of the boys 


152 One Little Life. 

home with me. The days have been so 
rainy and dull that Ernest has been kept in- 
doors, and he needs the company of chil- 
dren to brighten him up. There is an 
empty room at Squire Freeland’s, and I 
feel very much like having something to 
take care of. You go and ask Huldah to 
get them ready ; I want them to walk back 
w'ith me.” 

“ I am afraid they will be a great trouble 
to you, Edith.” 

“Let them go, let them go,” said Mrs. 
Gray, feebly. “ I shall feel more like keep- 
ing Gladys with me if she does not have the 
care of the boys. You do not mind, Edith 
dear,” she whispered ; “ it is hard for me to 
let the dear child out of my sight, and I do 
not think it is going to be very long.” 

“ Mind it ! It is a great favor to lend 
us the boys,” said Edith. “ But I am not go- 
ing to let you feel like that. You are going 
to be better soon. I am crazy to take you 
to ride in that dear old cradle of a chaise.” 
Turning away, and putting her arm around 


Burglary at the Four Corners. 153 

Gladys, she gave her a kiss and urged her 
gently from the room. Coming back to 
the bedside she said in her bright cheery 
way : 

“ What is it, dear Mrs. Gray.? ” 

“ Only this : a great trouble has come 
upon us. Roger, my eldest boy, has gone 
away. Gladys’s father has forbidden her to 
speak of his going; he is not willing any 
body should know. He thinks that when 
he comes back it will be a great pity for 
every body to remember and judge him by 
such a foolish act as this.” 

“ But where is he ? ” asked Edith, startled 
and distressed. 

“We do not know; we have not heard. 
It is five days now.” 

“ And which way did he go ? Does any 
one know any thing about him ?” 

“ No one knows any thing about him. 
When Gladys came home from your house, 
that afternoon that she was there, the boy 
was gone. But say nothing about it to 
Gladys. I cannot keep her from blaming 


154 


One Little Life. 


herself, poor child ; her heart is nearly- 
broken over the matter ; and nothing keeps 
her up but the fact that I need her every 
hour.” 

Just then Gladys came back, and Edith 
pressed Mrs. Gray’s hand in token tl>at she 
understood. But nothing further was said 
until Edith was ready to go, and Gladys 
was down-stairs quieting the two restless 
boys, who, vigorously scrubbed by Huldah, 
and clad in their Sunday suits, were im- 
patient to depart. 

“You love Gladys, don’t you ? ” said Mrs. 
Gray, wistfully, looking up in the girl’s 
sweet face. 

“Yes, indeed, as if she were my sister;” 
answered Edith. 

“ And, if any thing happened to me, would 
you — ” She paused and looked eagerly 
into Edith’s eyes. 

“Would I be to her every thing a sister 
could be.^ Yes, indeed, dear Mrs. Gray. 
But nothing is going to happen to you ; 
don’t fear.” 


Burglary AT THE Four Corners. 155 

“We cannot tell; we cannot tell,” said 
Mrs. Gray, shaking her head. “ I want to 
say to you, Edith, that her father means to 
be every thing that is kind to her; but 
Nelly is his pet, and boys — well, boys will 
manage, somehow, to get their way. But 
Gladys, she will never have one single de- 
sire of her heart unless you can help her to 
do so. Her father can let Roger go ; but 
Gladys cannot give him up any more than I 
can. The desire of her heart will be to 
find Roger. No one will help her to do that 
unless you can.” 

“ Be sure we will ; my father and my 
brother and myself — why, we shall never 
rest until we find him, Mrs. Gmy.” 

“Well, when you find him,” she said, 
wearily, “ bring him back to Gladys, if you 
can.” 

“ Don’t talk so, Mrs. Gray; we will bring 
him back to you. You are not going away 
from us.” 

“I don’t know,” answered the sick wom- 
an, feebly. “ I may have to wait ; I have 


One Little Life. 


^56 

had to wait most of my life for my heart’s 
desire ; but bring him back to Gladys.” And 
Edith turned away, pausing at the head of 
the stairs to wipe from her eyes the traces 
of sudden tears. 

Fivd' minutes later, with one of the twins 
by either hand, she was going up the coun- 
try road, telling them a fairy story that so 
excited Walter that he could hardly keep 
his dancing feet upon the ground. Half an 
hour later she stood with her two little cap- 
tives before Ernest’s chair. He was looking 
very white and weary ; but at sight of the 
children’s faces lifted himself, and, calling 
them to him, put his arms about them and 
drew them down to his neck and, kissing 
them, talked playfully to them until, thor- 
oughly happy and at home, Willie burst 
forth with : 

“ I wish you were my father, Mr. Mars- 
ton ; my father never kisses me any more.” 

“ I don’t mind,” said Walter, defiantly. 
“Girls kiss; men don’t kiss.” And yet his 
little heart was comforted quite as much as 


Burglary AT THE Four Corners. 157 

the other by the caresses, the secret of 
which he did not understand. 

Edith took the first moment, when they 
were happily at work in the orchard, to talk 
with Ernest of the trouble at the parsonage. 
And Mr. Marston, who had been absent in 
the city on business, and had come back to 
the Freeland mansion to pass the Sabbath 
only, was at once taken into their con- 
fidence. 

“But have they taken no steps to trace 
the boy ? ” asked Mr. Marston, in a tone of 
surprise. 

“No. Parson Gray is very proud, and 
he has been unwilling that any body should 
know of his flight. The other boy is gone, 
too, but' nobody would notice or mind his 
departure.” 

“Have inquiries been made at the Lang- 
ford Railway Station ? ” 

“I don’t think so. Could you drive over 
to-morrow morning,” said Ernest, “ and see 
if any trace of them could be found ? I 
cannot understand how two little fellows 


158 One Little Life. 

like that could have walked to that station 
all the way from Bentley, six miles the other 
side of the town, without being seen.” 

‘ ‘‘ No doubt they were seen over and over 
again, if any body had inquired ; but evi- 
dently nobody has asked any questions 
about them. I don’t think I shall wait till 
to-morrow morning,” said Mr. Marston. 
“I’ll ask Squire Freeland to let me have 
the old chaise, and ride over to Bentley this 
evening. Nobody knows me there, and the 
parson’s pride will not be compromised.” 

A half-hour later the top of the chaise 
went swinging out of sight down the road. 
There were no railway stations nearer to 
Edgefield than the two mentioned above. 
At Bentley the little depot was closed 
for the night ; but Mr. Marston sought 
out the ticket-master in his own house near 
by, and found him in his shirt-sleeves, 
smoking his pipe, reading the weekly news- 
paper and rocking the cradle with his foot 
at the same time. He was a typical Yankee, 
and answered every question of Mr. Mars- 


Burglary at the Four Corners. 159 

ton by asking another. Still, by the use 
of considerable lawyer-like dexterity, the in- 
quirer succeeded in discovering that he had 
no knowledge as to the movements of the 
fugitives. As Mr. Marston climbed to his 
seat the man followed him to the gate, and, 
leaning on his elbows, said : 

“ I kinder reckon you’re a detective, aint 
you ?” 

“ Not at all,” said Mr. Marston, smiling. 

‘‘Well, I sort o’ reckoned you was lookin' 
after that robbery down at the store at the 
Four Corners.” 

“I hadn’t even heard of any robbery,” 
said Mr. Marston. 

“ Well, it happened just at that time you 
was inquirin' about.” 

“When was that? "asked Mr. Marston. 

“ It was Monday night, last week. This 
Mr. Coles — he’s the store-keeper down to 
Bentley Four Corners — was doin’ a pretty 
brisk kind of a business. He’s got the 
biggest store there is anywhere round in 

these parts. Being that the Four Cor- 
11 


i6o One Little Life. 

ner’s folks trades here, and them from Edge- 
field and Langford and Jonesville and all 
round the kenty, it makes Coles’s a kind of 
Macy’s in minychoor. You cannot ask for 
any thing, from a piece of cheese to a 
pianner, but what you’ll find it there. If 
you want a spool of thread or a whole settin’ 
out for your daughter you jest give an order, 
and down to the Four Corners they’ll fill it 
up for you quick as lightnin’.” 

“Well, what about the robbery.? Was 
the store robbed ? ” 

“Well, yes, that is what I was tellin’ you. 
Did an awfully big run of business Monday 
night and kept open ruther later than usual ; 
and when Mr. Perkins shut up and went 
home he left considerable money in the 
drawer. Now, ’taint a bit like him to do 
that ; but his house was consider’ble way 
from the store, and Ethan Jones was down 
with his wagon, and Perkins, he jest turned 
the key and jumped in and forgot to empty 
the drawer. ’Twa’n’t no kind of a way to do 
business, accordin’ to my idee, and no such 


Burglary at the Four Corners. i6i 

thing had ever happened before ; but, sure 
enough, that night that drawer was broke 
into and a fifty-dollar bill, and quite a lot 
of small bills, much as eighty or a hundred 
dollars, all put together, was jest swept 
clean out. Queerest thing about it was 
that they couldn’t find any way that a man 
got out or in. Both doors were locked 
when they went away and both locked 
when they came back again next morning. 
Far’s any body knew there hadn’t been no 
tramps about, and except Parson Gray’s 
boy, a little feller that had been sent over 
to get a time-table so that his father could 
plan to ketch a train when he wanted to go 
to town, not a stranger had been into the 
depot nor into the store the livelong day.”- 

Mr. Marston listened in silence, careful 
not to betray by look or word that Parson 
Gray’s little feller ” was the boy he had 
in mind, but inwardly thankful that the fa- 
ther had so wisely concealed the flight of 
his son. 

When it was known that Roger had gone 


i 62 


One Little Life. 


and that he had been in Bentley on that 
day suspicion could not fail to fall upon 
him ; and even if he were not guilty the 
suspicion would be a blow from which his 
mother and sister would find it hard to rise. 
All the more important did it seem to him 
that no time should be lost in finding and 
bringing back the boy. It was plain the 
runaways had come this way, and had found 
out here what trains would take them to 
the city ; plain, too, that they had been too 
shrewd to take their tickets here. 

The only other point that would not be 
beyond their walking powers was the little 
station at Langford, six miles beyond Edge- 
field on the opposite side. Edgefield sat 
upon the hills, and the road made this par- 
tial circuit around it in the valley. It was 
a long ride, but the night was fine, and, 
after a hurried glance at his watch, Mr. 
Marston turned the horse’s head toward 
Edgefield — at the first turn beyond sight of 
his informant turning the astonished sorrel 
round sharply, and starting her, with a sharp 


Burglary at the Four Corners. 163 

touch of the whip, at her best speed along 
the river road. With some urging he could 
reach the station at Langford when it would 
be open for the passage of the midnight train 
for New York. This road by the river, 
whose course had been followed by the rail- 
road-builders, met in the valley the road that 
led from Edgefield down to the old house 
on the meadows, and at one point the gray 
pile of buildings rose in the distance quite 
clearly into view. Knowing the house to 
be only partially inhabited, Mr. Marston 
was struck by the fact that at many win- 
dows there gleamed one solitary light — not 
the cheering glow from a room all bright 
within, but the flicker of one candle pressed 
close agaist the pane as a warning or a wel- 
come to some one in the dark outside. 



CHAPTER IX. 


It 


MARTHA GILBERT S CROSSES. 

ALF tempted to turn aside to learn 
the meaning of the light-signals in 
V the windows of the deserted house, 
Mr. Marston rode on, reaching the station 
just in time to see the midnight train move 
slowly put and away. 

A farmer was waiting with his wagon, 
standing at the head of his skittish horsp, 
while the station-master was guiding wife 
and children, who had been on a visit to the 
city, safely across the track. No other pas- 
sengers had alighted; but after the train be- 
gan to move Mr. Marston saw a light figure 
swing itself suddenly from the platform of 
the rear car, scamper behind the station, 
and off like a squirrel down the dusty road: 
He hurried forward just in time to hear the 
distant steps; then, turning, waited ipipa- 


Martha Gilbert’s Crosses. 165 

tiently till the station-master handed the 
sleepy, waiting baby up to its mother’s 
arms, and began his inquiries as to the num- 
ber of tickets sold in certain hours, includ- 
ing the time of Roger’s escapade. But if 
the other agent knew too much this one 
knew too little, and no amount of question- 
ing stimulated him to recall who bought the 
the thirteen tickets sold, according to his 
books, on that particular day. Unwilling 
to draw attention to the boys Mr. Marston 
wisely forebore to ask if two were sold to 
lads, and began his homeward journey 
not a little disappointed and very greatly 
fatigued. 

“ Which way are you going ? ” asked the 
agent, swinging his lantern and keys. 

“ Back to Edgefield by way of the cov- 
ered bridge.” 

‘‘.If you don’t mind a stony road and a 
steep hill you can cut off a piece by taking 
the old road that leads through the Meadow 
Farm, right on by the old empty house in 
the hollow.” 


i66 


One Little Life. 


“ It isn’t empty any longer, I believe,” said 
Mr. Marston. 

“ No, there’s a decent woman and a 
mighty smart boy livin’ there ; been respect- 
able folks, I reckon. But there’s a beast of 
a husband that has dragged ’em down and 
keeps ’em down by drink. Aint no use for 
a family to try to be decent after the whisky- 
bottle gets to be king. Might ’beout as well 
give it up; and guess these folks hev giv it 
up.” 

“ How do they live ? ” asked Mr. Mars- 
ton. 

“ Lord knows. The boy’s smart to work, 
and earned considerable last hayin’. The 
woman picks berries. She told my wife 
she would go out nursin’ if she could get it 
to do.” 

Remembering what he had heard of 
Gladys’s evening visit to this place, and in- 
fluenced partly by curiosity and partly by a 
faint hope that he might find some trace 
of Roger, Mr. Marston took the steep and 
stony road. Once, at the top of a long hill, 


Martha Gilbert’s Crosses. 167 

he saw, or thought he saw, a hurrying figure 
at its foot. He tried to hasten, but the sure- 
footed pony was more prudent, and when 
he reached the foot of the hill there was no 
one to be seen. Had he turned his gaze 
over the hedge he might have caught a dim 
outline, away across the fields, of one speed- 
ing toward the beckoning lights, and proba- 
bly have seen some one leap the fence and 
disappear at the back-door of the old gray 
house. As it was, he saw nothing till, dis- 
mounting and tying his horse to the fence 
by the entrance to the bridge, he went up 
the long winding lane, and with a strong 
hand made the unused knocker answer with 
a loud, reverberant sound. 

Hurrying steps, and hushed voices, and a 
sudden darkening of the lights at the win- 
dows nearest him followed his knock, and 
then a great silence fell upon the place. 

In the stillness he heard, or thought he 
heard, a door close, a twig crackle, a light, 
cautious step growing less and less distinct ; 
but while he hesitated whether to turn and 


i68 


One Little Life. 


follow the door opened, and he found him- 
self face to face with the mistress of the 
Meadow House. 

“ I called, madam, to ask if your son is at 
home, thinking he might be able to tell me 
something about Roger Gray,” he began, 
when the woman, suddenly lifting the candle 
she held in her hand so that its light flared 
full upon his face, started back into the 
shadow of the passage ; not so quickly, 
however, but that he had seen her, and, 
stepping in after her, he said: 

“ What ! Martha, is it you ? And is it 
possible you have come to this ? ” 

“ Hush,” she answered, stepping back- 
ward into the darkened room and motion- 
ing him to follow her, which he did, closing 
the door behind him. “ Do not speak 
aloud,” she added, excitedly, her large dark 
eyes burning with excitement; “my hus- 
band is asleep in the next room, and,” she 
added, as if struggling to recover her com- 
posure, “ and — and — my boy is not at home. 
What did you say you wanted of him ? ” 


Martha Gilbert’s Crosses. 169 

“No matter now, Martha; look at me, 
listen to me. What does it mean that you 
are here ? How often and how long I have 
tried to find you! Now you must let me 
take you away from this place.” 

“ Don’t talk of that,” she said, gloomily. 
“ I shall never go away from this place to 
any thing better. Where he goes I must 
go ; and he will only go into such places as 
the world has for drunkards and drunkards’ 
wives.” 

“But, Martha, remember the past; re- 
member what you once were. Remember 
the father whose heart you — broke.” 

“ Don’t speak to me of him, Henry; if he 
had been a father to me, in true kindness 
and love, I should never have become what 
I am. It is too late now for any change for 
me.” 

“But your boy! You have a son; how 
can you bring him up in surroundings like 
these 

“Yes, I have a boy — alas! A good boy, 
though he is his son.’’ 


One Little Life. 


170 

“ And for his sake you will come away, 
then ? he asked, gently, seeing that the 
coming tears prevented her saying what she 
would. 

“ For his sake I would do any thing,” she 
answered, fervently. “ But I cannot leave 
his father. There is no one else; he has no 
friend but me. Nor has my poor boy either, 
for that matter,” she added, sadly. 

“ Where is your son ? Can I not see him ? ” 

“He’s not here,” she answered, evasively. 

“ But he has been here ; did he not come 
on the midnight train to-night ? Did I not 
see him come in at the back door ? ” 

“ He’s not here,” she repeated, shutting 
her lips together with a resolute air. “ What 
could you want of him if he were ? ” 

“To be his friend, Martha. You say he 
has no one but you.” 

“ Then you would not betray him ? ” she 
said eagerly, looking for the first time 
straight into Mr. Marston’s eyes. “ I as- 
sure you he has done nothing .wrong.” 

“ For what reason, then, should one be- 


Martha Gilbert’s Crosses. 17 i 

tray him ? ” asked Mr. Marston, smiling. 
“And why should he run away if he has no 
reason to hide ? ” 

With an impatient shrug of the shoulders 
she turned away to the window, and press- 
ing her face to the pane, peered anxiously 
into the darkness. Seeing that even the 
suggestion of suspicion of her boy had stung 
her into irritated silence, Mr. Marston ap- 
proached her and said, with a look of un- 
mistakable kindness: 

“ Martha, you know you can trust me ; 
you know that for your sake, for the sake 
of the past, I would, in every way, protect 
and defend your boy. But I am sure he 
has been here to-night. I heard him run 
down the lane while I stood at the door. I 
know, and you know too, probably, about 
the robbery of the store at Bentley Four 
Corners.” 

She gave a little start, and said, sharply: 

“I know he did not do it.” 

“How do you know?” persisted Mr. 
Marston. 


172 One Little Life. 

She turned upon him with a certain air 
of haughty indignation and gazed at him 
with a look that said plainer than words, 
Because it would be impossible for him to 
do it — because he is my son.” 

He read her answer, though he did not 
speak. 

“ I understand how you feel about it ” 
he added, still patiently, “ but if it is true 
that he did not know any thing about 
that theft he should not stay in hiding. 
Suspicion must certainly attach to him and ^ 
to the boy who went away with him. Use 
your influence, I beg of you, to have him 
come home and to bring back Roger Gray. 

I promise you to stand between him and 
all possible harm if he comes back. It 
would be hard for me to believe that any 
boy of the race he springs from could be- 
come a thief. I do not for a moment be- 
lieve it is true of him.” 

“ I know it is not true,” she said, indig- 
nantly. “ I know who did it, and when the 
time comes I will prove it,” she answered, 


Martha Gilbert’s Crosses. 173 

hotly. ‘‘ I know who stole the money, 
Henry Marston, and it was not my son.” 

‘^You surely do not mean the pastor’s 
son could have taken it ? ” he asked, in sur- 
prise. 

“I did not say so; no, I do not mean it; 
but,” she added, excitedly, “ I cannot talk 
about it. Go away, Mr. Marston. Richard 
Gilbert will be very angry, and I cannot an- 
swer for the consequences if he finds you 
here.” Then suddenly changing her man- 
ner to one of entreaty: “You want to be 
kind to me — to be my friend ? Then never 
tell anybody you ever knew me, and never let 
any one think harm of my poor boy. And 
— yes, one thing more: never remember you 
have seen me and never come near me 
again.” 

“But, Martha, that is all wrong. For me 
to leave you in a life like this — nothing could 
be more cruelly wrong.” 

“ It must be so,” she said ; and then, as 
the noise of some moving object in the 
next room attracted her attention, she en- 


174 One Little Life. 

treated hurriedly: “ O go, and quickly, be- 
fore he comes in here! ” 

And saying under his breath: 

“Yes, Martha, I will go, but I shall come 
again,” he quietly passed out of the front 
door and slowly took his way between the 
hedges of the winding lane. 

Pausing at the entrance of the bridge 
where he had tied his horse he was not sur- 
prised to find it no longer there. Whoever 
had made escape from the dwelling as he 
entered it had doubtless used the sorrel to 
speed him on his way. So full, however, 
was his mind of other thoughts that he 
walked slowly on with his head bent and his 
hands clasped behind him, hardly lifting his 
eyes to the shadowy outline of the distant 
hills. As he passed the parsonage he saw 
a light burning in Roger’s window and the 
dim outline of Gladys’s form standing with 
some other person just iriside the garden- 
gate. His first impulse was to approach 
and see if Roger had returned ; his next to 
spare Gladys the mortification of having any 


Martha Gilbert’s Crosses. 175 

one see him steal back through the darkness 
to his home. A hundred yards farther, with- 
drawn behind a clump of bushes near the 
road-side, stood the squire’s old horse, at 
the sight of which Mr. Marston changed his 
mind, and concluded that it must have been 
Roger himself, and not Dick Gilbert, who 
had made his escape from the house in the 
meadow and helped himself to a midnight 
ride. Resisting the impulse to ride the last 
mile home he left the sorrel where it was^ 
and half an hour later entered the darkened 
farm-house, and, without waking either his 
son or daughter, quietly went up to his room 
and seated himself by the window to wait 
for what should come. He had not waited 
long when the sound of w^heels coming 
slowly and softly up the hill led him to steal 
out as quietly as he had come in, and take 
his position just outside the gate that led to 
the carriage - house. If the comer were 
Roger, bringing home the horse, he would 
enter by the gate ; if it should prove that 

he had not come to stay, and should be in^ 
12 


176 


One Little Life. 


tending to use the horse to go farther on 
his way, this would be the most convenient 
spot for Mr. Marston to take the horse 
quietly by the head. But the old sorrel 
came on calmly, and in a moment more was 
rubbing her nose against the bars, and the 
astonished boy who jumped from the seat 
in the darkness jumped straight into Mr. 
Marston's outstretched arms. They closed 
around him tightly, and one runaway, 
though the captor did not know which one, 
was an unwilling and struggling captive. 





CHAPTER X. 


VISITORS AT MIDNIGHT. 

•ff ^I^OU might as well hold still, my 
lad," said Mr. Marston, stoutly, 
“for I am not going to let you go; 
but I don’t want to arouse the household. 
Come in here to the stables with me, and 
let me find out who it is that steals a ride 
and leaves an old man like myself to walk." 

“ All right, sir," answered the boy, ceasing 
to struggle, and settling himself into his 
jacket, on the collar of which Mr. Marston 
yet kept a vigorous hold. “You need not 
hold me. I’ll come along. I give you my 
word, sir. I’ll not run away," and the lad 
reached forward to open the gate and started 
the old horse toward the barn. 

“ Are you Roger Gray ? " he asked. 

“No, sir, I’m Richard Gilbert," answered 
the lad. “It was not fair to let you walk; 


178 


One Little Life. 


but the fact is I thought you were some- 
body that had come to take me away.” 

“ How take you away.^ To arrest you } ” 

“Yes,” answered the boy. 

“ What for ? What have you done to 
make you fancy that you were to be put 
under arrest ? ” 

“ Nothing, sir; ” and then, as Mr. Marston, 
still keeping his hold, tried to open the 
stable-door, the boy suddenly sprang out of 
his grasp, and, opening it, led the horse in 
and at once began to unharness, never stop- 
ping until she stood comfortably in her place 
with her nose deep bedded in a rick of hay. 
Then calmly walking back to his captor, 
who had all the time kept his station near 
the door, he said : 

“It does look mean to be skulking around 
in the night, but I wanted to see my mother, 
and I had to come back to see Roger’s 
sister.” 

“ Where is Roger.^ Why did he not come 
himself.?” 

“I left Roger in New York. He is afraid 


I 


Visitors at Midnight. 179 

to come back. I wanted to find out if it 
was all right for him ; if his father would 
be hard on him ; if his sister thought best 
for him to come.” 

“ And was it you who were talking with 
the sister by the gate?” 

“ Yes. I saw her by Roger’s window, and 
I waited in the garden, and whistled just as 
Roger whistles, and she hurried down.” 

^‘She thought you were Roger, then. 
What did she say when she found you were 
not ? ” 

Well, you see, I thought she’d be very 
cross at me for going fishing with Roger and 

taking him off to New York; but instead of 

♦ 

that she was just as good and kind to me as 
if I had been her brother too; and she told 
me how sick her mother was, and how bad 
they all felt, and I promised her to get 
Roger home as quick as ever I could.” 

“ But do you know what awaits him here 
if he comes home? Do you know that you 
and he both will probably be arrested for 
the robbery at the corner store ? ’* 


i8o One Little Life. 

“ I don’t see why he should,” said Rich- 
ard, stoutly. “ He wasn’t there at all.” 

“ Do you mean to say that you were 1 ” 
asked Mr. Marston, sharply. 

“ No, sir ; I wasn’t there either.” 

“ Then how do you know about it 1 ” 

“ My mother told me to-night.” 

“And you had heard nothing about it 
before ? Then how did it happen that you 
went away on the very same day that it 
occurred ? ” 

“ Why, Roger and I had both been play- 
ing truant a good deal, and his father found 
it out and said he would put Roger to work 
on a farm if he ever did it again. And this 
day he did it again. We did not either 
of us go to school. He came down to 
our house and we went over by the Bent- 
ley Pond, fishing. We forgot how late 
it was, and when we were ready to go home 
we went into the railway station at Bentley 
to see if we could not steal a ride on the 
freight-train round to Edgefield depot, and 
we found it was after six o’clock. And then 


Visitors at Midnight. 


i8i 

we thought what a row there’d be in the par- 
son’s house when Roger got home, and we 
said : ‘ Don’t let’s us go home at all ; let’s go 
to the city and see if we can’t find some 
work.’ And Roger said he didn’t want to 
live at home any more anyway, but he 
wasn’t going to work on a farm. But if I’d 
known he had such a nice sister I wouldn’t 
have let him go ; and I tell you he’s got to 
come back, ’rested or no ’rested. And I 
knew I ought to get work, for mother needed 
all the money I could get. And so we said 
we’d go to New York and try it. Then we 
asked what time the trains went from 
Bentley.” 

“ But you did not go from Bentley,” in- 
terrupted Mr. Marston. 

“ No, we walked from Bentley over to 
Langford and took the midnight train.” 

“ But where did Roger get his money ? ” 

“ He didn’t have any,” answered Dick. 

“ But did you have any? ” 

^‘Yes.” The boy hung his head. “I had 
money.” 


i 82 


One Little Life. 


“ Enough to take you to New York and 
to take care of you there ? ” 

“Yes/' answered the lad. 

“ And this same day there was taken out 
of the corner store a good deal of money, 
and you passed the time between six and 
twelve o’clock in that neighborhood. Now, 
perhaps you can tell me where you got the 
money that took you two boys to New~ 
York.” 

For a moment the boy hesitated, and 
then, with a perceptible faltering in his voice, 
he said : 

“ It was not mine, sir ; it was some money 
that belonged to my mother, and,” he added, 
“I — I knew she ought to have it, and I 
brought it ’most all back to her to-night.” 

“And what do you propose to do now, 
may I ask ?” 

“ I am going back to send Roger home.” 

“ But suppose 1 don’t let you go?” 

“ O, you must, sir ; his sister said she 
was afraid his mother would die if she 
didn’t see him.” 


Visitors at Midnight. 183 

‘‘ And do you propose to return, too ? ” 
asked Mr. Marston, taking no notice of this 
burst of apparent sympathy. 

“ No ; I mean to stay.” 

“ Then you let Roger come back and take 
the brunt of this accusation ? ” 

“ No, indeed ; I never thought of that. I 
meant to stay and get work and earn the 
money that we have spent already and bring 
it back to mother.” 

But don’t you see what a place you are 
putting Roger in } ” went on his interrogator, 
anxious to discover whether this boyish 
frankness and apparent innocence were only 
a cover for villainy far beyond his years. 

In the light of the early morning the 
boy’s face looked haggard and pale, but it 
was a face so like that of his mother that 
Mr. Marston found it hard to look at it 
with any but kindly eyes. For a moment 
he looked flushed and puzzled, as if the 
thought were new to him, and then he an- 
swered, quietly : 

“ All right, sir ; I’ll stay now, if only you’ll 


184 One Little Life.' 

send for Roger to come home. Nobody 
need know he comes; I did not mean to 
tell any body. I can bring him in the night 
and take him back again if it is not safe for 
him to stay. Of course, if there’s danger of 
his being arrested I wouldn’t want him to 
come ; but, you see, his mother is sick, and 
his sister wants him, and he must come. If 
we’re both sent to prison he must come; ” 
and the boy rose in his excitement and 
began to pace up and down the floor of the 
barn. 

Apparently satisfied with his investigation 
Mr. Marston sat and watched him, while 
the east began to glow red with the first 
flush of the dawn. As the strong, lithe- 
limbed young figure paced resolutely up and 
down he thought of his own crippled boy 
lying in weakness, and possible suffering, 
through these still night hours. What glo- 
rious manhood there might be for this neg- 
lected son of a drunkard ! What a wreck 
of manhood had come already to his own 
noble son ! From one point of view there 


Visitors at Midnight. 185 

was no question as to what should be done 
with this lad — he ought to be handed over 
to the authorities on suspicion and Ids com- 
rade arrested and brought home in disgrace. 
But, guided more than he knew by the spirit 
of his own son, he called out abruptly, 

“ Richard, come here.” 

Like a prisoner about to receive a sen- 
tence the boy turned and stood by his side. 

“ This is all a strange story that you tell 
me, my boy, but I’m going to believe it. It 
is true that Roger’s mother is going to die 
if her mind is not relieved about the fate of 
her son. Go for him and bring him back. 
Come yourself and take him away yourself. 
I promise you to give no clue to the author- 
ities that I know any thing about this rob- 
bery until that task is done. After that I 
cannot say what will be my duty in the mat- 
ter. You’d better go now, too, before it 
grows any lighter, for I assure you this is 
hardly a neighborhood in which you should 
be seen. But stop one moment,” he added, 
taking some bills from his vest pocket; 


i86 


One Little Life. 


“don’t use anymore of that money; use 
this instead. Some day, after you are in a 
good position and have earned it, bring it 
br.ck to me again.” 

For a moment the lad turned away and 
made an impatient dash at his eyelids with 
the back of his brown hand ; and then, tak- 
ing fifteen dollars from his pocket, he handed 
it to Mr. Marston, saying, 

“ Keep this, then ; I assure you it is not 
stolen ; but you think it is. It belongs to 
my mother. I will use yours, and I’ll surely 
bring it back to you.” 

And then, while Mr. Marston tried to look 
unbending and stern, the lad passed out of 
the gate and walked wearily down the road. 

Two nights later the same low whistle, an 
hour after midnight, called Gladys from her 
mother’s side. The invalid was very rest- 
less and had been suffering much, and her 
ear was the first to catch the low, familiar 
sound. 

“ Gladys, Gladys,” she called, “ that is 
Roger. Bring him to me at once.” 


Visitors at Midnight. 187 

Fearing that it might not be Roger, 
Gladys hastened down, and, softly unlock- 
ing the door, felt Roger’s arms about her 
neck and Roger’s tears upon her cheek. 
Hardly waiting for a whispered word at the 
foot of the staircase she led him up, and, 
opening the door of the sick-room, closed it 
softly, leaving the boy on his knees by his 
mother’s bedside, with his curly head pil- 
lowed upon her breast. Leaving him there 
she stole down softly to the garden, where 
Richard was waiting for her under the same 
apple-tree where a while ago she had read 
the letter from “ the friend.” 

“ I am going to keep him,” she began, 
eagerly. “ I cannot let him go. I think it 
will kill mother to let him go.” 

“No, no, not this time; it must not be 
this time ; ” answered Dick. “ He shall 
come back soon to stay with her ; but I 
dare not leave him now.” 

“ Why not ? ” said Gladys, anxiously. 
“ What danger is there in his staying here at 
home ? I know his' father will forgive him.” 


One Little Life. 


1 88 

But it was not until after much coaxing 
that Richard told her what the danger was ; 
and when she knew it needed nothing fur- 
ther to convince her that Roger must go 
away. She had no doubt of his innocence ; 
but how strong suspicion must be against 
them both she could not fail to see. And 
the agitation of an arrest and trial, with the 
publicity that must come with reference to 
all Roger’s misdemeanors would, she knew, 
prove an incalculable mortification to her 
father, and possibly a death-blow to her 
mother. At all risks this must be avoided ; 
and for the present, at least, she could she 
no way but to let her brother go. A little 
comfort came to her in the thought that 
Richard was not, after all, so bad a com- 
panion as she had feared. She saw that it 
was Richard who was taking care of her 
weaker brother, and, much to her relief, 
found that his desire was to protect rather 
than to mislead. There was a curious manly 
frankness about the lad that seemed utterly 
inconsistent with any love of vagabond 


Visitors at Midnight. 


189 

ways ; and Gladys, who had already taken 
his mother into her heart and her prayers, ■ 
had no difficulty in making a place in both 
for that anxious mother’s child. In that 
brief time under the apple-trees she wrung 
from him a promise of good behavior for 
himself and of every care for Roger; and 
then, with an almost breaking heart, betook 
herself to Huldah's pantry, and, wondering 
what explanation of the depleted larder she 
could give Huldah the next day, she yet 
provided a generous meal to be eaten in 
their walk across the country under the 
midnight stars. 




CHAPTER XI. 


THE HEART OF THE FATHER IS HARDENED. 


OT much like lads bent upon a 
frolic were these two sorry-faced 
boys who went scurrying away 
through the midnight from Parson Gray’s 
back door. Roger was glad of the dark- 
ness that hid his swollen ,and tearful eyes. 
They had before them a long walk across 
country to a little station midway between 
two villages. Here they hoped without 
being observed to board a train that passed 
before light, which would take them to a 
junction where they could get an early train 
for New York. They started briskly up the 
road, making no pause until they were op- 
posite Squire Freeland’s old mansion, when 
they stole in at the barn-yard gate, meaning 
to strike across lots by a path that led by 
the Squire’s red barn. Roger had passed 


Heart of the Father Hardened. 191 

the open door in safety, when out from the 
shadow sprang the tall figure of Hiram Hig- 
gins, the Squire's “ hired man,” who made 
a dash at Dick as both boys took to their 
heels. Roger, being ahead, leaped the 
boundary-fence and went speeding away 
across the pasture ; but Dick's coat caught 
on the post, and, though he struggled 
bravely to free himself, when the cloth gave 
way he fell backward into the arms of his 
pursuer. 

“ Blessed if I aint got yer neow, you little 
sneak of a chicken-thief. I told the square 
'twa’n’t no dogs but two-legged ones that 
was a-carryin' off of them air settin' hens, 
and I jest calkerlated I’d sleep in the barn, 
and sleep with one eye open tew, till I 
ketched somebody. And neow I got yer,” 
giving Dick’s collar a. spiteful twist as he 
dragged him toward the house. “And I’ll 
have ye shet up in the jail, fust thing ye 
know.” 

“ I haven’t stolen any chickens,”said Dick, 

half strangled. “I’m not a thief.” 

13 


192 


One Little Life. 


‘‘Well, whether you be or whether yew 
aint, you was ketched in the yard, and you 
run like a thief, and you’ll smart like a thief, 
or my name aint Hiram Higgins.” And he 
held tight with both hands and dragged the 
resisting boy up the steps and on to the 
back piazza. 

“ Don’t take me into the house,” begged 
Dick, panting with his exertions to escape. 
“You needn’t wake every body up; I 
promise you I wont run away.” But the 
noise of their shuffling feet had already 
wakened Einest Marston, who spoke to his 
father softly, and in a moment Mr. Mars- 
ton appeared, at the back door leading to 
the piazza, in dressing-gown and slippers. 

“ I’ve got him ! I’ve got the chicken- 
thief ! ” said Hiram, exultingly. 

“ O, no ! You know that is not true ! ” 
broke in Richard, wrenching himself sud- 
denly from Hiram’s hold and hurrying to 
Mr. Marston’s side. “ Let me speak to you 
one moment, sir, one moment without him,” 
he added, nodding toward Hiram. 


Heart of the Father Hardened. 193 

“Jest as good as ketched ’em at it,” said 
Hiram. “Jest as sure’s ef their pockets 
was full of pullet’s aiggs,” he added, making 
a dash at Dick’s bulging pocket. But Dick 
dodged the blow, and, squaring off, doubled 
both fists, saying, angrily : 

“Better keep your hands off now ! You 
dragged me in here like a thief, but I wont 
have my pockets searched like a thief by 
you or any other man.” 

“ Be careful, Dick,” said Mr. Marston, 
quietly, laying his hand on Richard’s shoul- 
der ; “ he found you on the premises after 
midnight with your pockets full, and you 
ought to be willing to show why you came 
and what you are taking away.” 

“ I will tell you^ sir,” said the lad, in a 
tone of such evident distress that Mr. Mars- 
ton, who suspected the secret of the lad’s 
visit, drew him one side and heard his 
account of Roger’s visit to his home. 

“You will find it is all true, sir. This is 
the shortest cut to the station, sir, and Roger 
has gone on. But I have all the money and 


194 One Little Life. 

he can’t take the train without me, and he 
will surely be arrested if he hangs around 
the country. Do let me go, sir; I’ll get him 
off and then I’ll come back if you think I 
ought to do so.” 

“ Don’t be troubled, my lad,” said Mr. 
Marston, kindly ; “ you were doing no harm 
here. I shall-. get you off, but I think Hiram 
would be better satisfied if you show him 
what you have in your packets.” 

“I can’t, sir,” said Dick, coloring pain- 
fully. 

“ Why not, if you have nothing there that’s 
not your own ? ” ^ 

“ Because— because,” and the boy’s voice 
fairly faltered, “ he .would think I stole it 
or begged it ; and I’m not a beggar, Mr. 
Marston, and I’m not a thief! ” 

“ Better tell me what you have, then.” 

For a moment the boy hesitated, and then 
slowly drawing from his pocket a package 
wrapped in a white napkin he showed the 
food given him by Gladys Gray, holding it 
in his hand as daintily as if it were some 


Heart of the Father Hardened. 195 

precious thing, and blushing like a girl as he 
lifted his eyes and said simply: 

“ She was giving Roger some, and she 
said this was for me.” 

“All right, Dick,” said Mr. Marston, re- 
sisting a strange impulse to throw his arms 
kindly about the boy, “you may go; I’ll 
make it all right with Hiram; but wait a 
minute,” he added; “you will have time 
enough to get the train. I hear Ernest call- 
ing me.” And leaving Dick he mounted 
the stairs to the bedside of his son. 

Clumsily lifting himself from the step 
where he had been sitting Hiram came and 
put his hand upon the boy’s shoulder; Dick 
made no resistance and no effort to run 
away. Meantime, by his son’s bedside' Mr. 
Marston- was telling rapidly the story of 
Roger’s and Dick’s return. 

“ Don’t let them be alone in the city, fa- 
ther. Give them the address of ' the friend.’ 
She can and will find ways to help them in 
time of sickness or trouble. Just let them 
have the name and I will attend to the rest. 


196 One Little Life. 

I’m sorry about the squire’s chickens, fa- 
ther. I’m sorry about the loss of money at 
the corner store ; but the money and the 
chickens can be paid for or replaced. I’m 
far more anxious to save the boys.” 

“All right, my son. I’m with you there, 
and we’ll do our best ! Now try to get an 
hour or two of sleep.” Returning to the 
piazza he said to Richard: “ What are you 
going to do when you get back to the 
city ? ” 

“ Look for work,” Dick answered, 
promptly. 

“ Well, here on this card,” said he, after 
thinking a moment, “ are two addresses. If 
you are not successful after you have tried 
your best go to these places and follow the 
advice there given you. You may not like 
it. It may not seem wisest to you^ but it 
will be the best.” And walking with him to 
the end of the piazza, where Hiram sat in 
waiting for his prey, he said, “ I shall have 
to take the boy away from you, Hiram. He 
has not been after chickens, and I know all 


Heart of the Father Hardened. 197 

about his visit here; ” and, motioning to 
Dick to go at once, he lingered behind, con- 
soling as best he could the disappointed 
hired man. Only half pacified, Hiram went 
back to the barn grumbling about ** them 
city folks that come eout into the kentry and 
took the law and the Gauspel right eout of 
folks’s hands,” while the boys on whom this 
new gospel of kindness was beginning its 
beneficent work were speeding away over 
the fields. 

Richard had not gone far before he saw 
Roger’s head peering above the hedge. 
And they had plenty of time to reach the 
station, and time before the train left to sit 
behind a stone wall and eat the break- 
fast over the loss of which Huldah was 
even at that moment scolding in no gentle 
terms. 

But Huldah’s scolding was the least of 
all the storms that seemed brooding over the 
parsonage. The cloud rarely left Mr. Gray’s 
brow in the few brief hours he bestowed 
upon his family. He had counted upon 


198 One Little Life. 

Gladys’s extreme love for him to relieve 
him from the discomfort of having his will 
opposed ; and here was Roger defying and 
deceiving him, and both wife and daughter 
silently declining to agree with his views as 
to the severity of treatment that should 
await his son’s return. It was not his 
“ way ” to say much, but he made the very 
air of the sick-room and of the dining- 
room, at meals and at prayers, feel his dis- 
pleasure, that they should, as he termed it, 
“ take the part ” of the wandering boy. 

This mood was one that, heretofore, 
Gladys had never been able to resist. If 
her father felt himself injured, or, as he 
termed it, “ hurt,” she felt it too, and was 
ready to condemn whatever opposed his 
will. And even now she felt the injustice of 
concealing from him the news of Roger’s 
whereabouts and the fact of his visit home. 
As his father she knew he ought to know 
of what his son was suspected, and why he 
must remain concealed. But the knowledge 
could but add to his own mortification and 


Heart of the Father Hardened. 199 

grief, and she feared that the judge would 
outweigh the father in his heart, and that 
the lad would be given over to the law. 
And, after all, would it not be best to let 
him be arrested, and give him a chance to 
clear himself.^ She was resolved to believe 
him innocent, but what if, on the other 
hand, he could not prove it, and was made 
to rest either under the penalty or under the 
suspicion ; would it not destroy all hope of 
winning him to be a noble man.? Too un- 
familiar with the practical working of the 
law in such cases to form any clear idea of 
what the lad would have to suffer if guilty, 
her imagination ran riot with visions of 
Roger in convict’s garb, with shaven head, 
working side by side with hardened crimi- 
nals and sleeping at night in a cell. Her 
overstrained mind and tortured spirit found 
much strength in prayer, and in the thought 
that a great many hearts, enrolled among 
the servants of Him to whom she prayed, 
as they prayed for all the band were, with- 
out knowing it, asking God to strengthen 


200 


One Little Life. 


and guide her steps. Ever since Ernest 
had told her of their habit of silent lifting 
of hearts daily at sunset for all their num- 
ber, she had felt a strange uplifting and 
support. She was one of them, “ a servant 
of Jesus Christ,” and she felt strongly the 
whole chain drawing her little link nearer and 
nearer to God. She could not talk to Ernest 
of her terror that Roger might be proved a 
criminal, nor could she speak to him of her 
father; Edith too, she thought, was too 
light-hearted to be made to feel the weight 
of such burdens — and, besides, she was ab- 
sent just now, spending a few weeks in New 
York with friends who were about to go 
abroad. In her perplexity Gladys read over 
and over and over the letter from the un- 
known friend, which she kept between the 
leaves of her Bible. This day, as she re- 
read it, it seemed suddenly as if strong 
motherly arms were about her, and as if she, 
who had to be mother to her owm feeble 
parent, might put her head down and be in- 
deed a child. O the rest of knowing there 


Heart of the Father Hardened. 201 

was somebody able and willing to help her ; 
willing to believe she meant to do right, and 
to show her what would be right toward fa- 
ther and brother and Richard, and all these 
little ones, who rested so heavily upon her 
heart ! She had decided that it would not 
be right to tell Ernest or Edith; but why 
should she not write it all to the friend, 
whose letter, lying there before her, said : 
“ It may not mean much to you now to 
know hearts are waiting to share your bur- 
dens, but it will be a comfort when the bur- 
dens come. Take it, then, as His gift who 
has sent one of his f servants ’ to minister 
to your need.” 

And she did write, but before the answer 
came a blow fell that made all writing in 
vain. For, notwithstanding the relief of 
Roger’s visit to the destroying anxiety that 
preyed upon his mother’s mind, she did not 
seem to rally, but became so steadily worse 
that Gladys’s uneasiness about her grew to 
positive alarm. In her weakness her mind 
wandered, and in her wandering she talked 


202 


One Little Life. 


constantly of Roger. This fact alone was 
enough to make Gladys keep the kind 
neighbors who offered their assistance out 
of the sick-room. It was true that her 
mother was not content to have any one 
else wait upon her, but none the less the 
neighbors sat in solemn conclave in the sit- 
ting-room, and talked in severe whispers of 
the peculiar notions of the child. The hus- 
band and father, who had been too much 
engrossed ordinarily to spend much time by 
the bedside, was also “ hurt ” at his wife’s 
evident preference for her child, and so did 
not linger there very long at a time. But he 
staid long enough to learn from her inco- 
herent wailing every thing that Gladys most 
feared to have him know. And Gladys was 
summoned from the sick-bed to his study 
and confronted with the heinousness of her 
fault of concealment, on which he dwelt 
until, overworn in nerves and spirit, she al- 
most saw with his eyes and believed herself 
alone responsible for all their misery and 
shame. 


Heart of the Father Hardened. 203 

“You always pleaded for him when I 
would have punished him/’ he said, in con- 
clusion, “ and you concealed from me the 
crime of which he is probably guilty.” 

“O no, father; it is impossible,” she vent- 
ured, brokenly. 

“ Don’t interrupt me,” he answered, irri- 
tably. “From you, his elder sister, in his 
mother’s place, I had a right to expect con- 
fidence and co-operation. Instead of that 
you have shown concealment and complic- 
ity. If his mother’s death results from this 
trouble you will be largely responsible.” 
Gladys staggered and put her hands to her 
head as if he had given her a blow. “You 
need not think he came home without being 
seen,” he went on, mercilessly. “ Hiram 
Higgins caught his companion stealing 
Squire Freeman’s chickens only last Thurs- 
day night.” Gladys started, for it was the 
very night when Richard left her, promising 
to be nothing that was not manly and true. 

He said there were two of them, but one 
leaped the wall and escaped. The other 


204 One Little Life. 

would havd been in jail to-day but that Mr. 
Marston promised to pay all damages and 
persuaded Hiram to let them go. Why do 
you suppose Mr. Marston did that ? I think 
because he knew Roger was the other one, 
and he wanted to save me the disgrace of 
having the boy exposed.” 

“ It was very good of him,” said Gladys, 
her voice choking with the tears she was 
vainly trying to hide. 

“ Good of him ! But, Gladys, are you too 
dull and blind to see where it places me ? 
People will know he came home, will think 
I took him in and harbored and hid a thief ; 
they will think I try to stand in the way of 
the law at the same time that I stand in the 
pulpit and urge my people to uphold the 
law. Far from it,” he added, walking ex- 
citedly up and down the room. ‘‘ I would 
be the first man to pass him over into the 
hands of the law.” 

“ Gladys, Gladys, come quickly ! ” shouted 
Walter, pushing open the library-door with 
a bang. “ Here’s a woman !• Dick Gilbert’s 


Heart of the Father Hardened. 205 

mother, from the old house in the meadow. 
And she wont go away, and she wont speak 
to any body but you, though Mrs. Jones and 
Mrs. Wood’s in the parlor ; they tried and 
tried and tried.” 




CHAPTER XII. 

A “friend" in need and in deed. 

t 

AITING in the porch, refusing to 
TFT come inside, though invited by the 

'F two neighbors who were keeping 
watch and ward in the parlor, Gladys met 
again the companion of that lonely mid- 
night walk on the night of Roger’s flight. 
She was neatly dressed, and had altogether 
an air quite equal to if not beyond that of 
her neighbors. But her eyes burned with a 
feverish light, and her voice was husky and 
broken. 

“ Come away with me somewhere quickly, 
where no one will see us ! I have something 
to say to you alone." 

“Say it here, please, then," said Gladys, 
across whose mind flashed thoughts of Rog- 
er’s arrest' “ Say it quickly, and I can bear 
it, whatever it is," she added, feeling as if. 


“Friend ” in Need and in Deed. 207 

after her father’s words that made her to 
blame for all, even for her mother’s suffer- 
ing, there could be little more to bear. 

“ I cannot, will not, tell you here,” said 
the woman, glancing suspiciously at Hul- 
dah, who was helping herself to a good look 
through the slats of the kitchen blind. 

“ Then go down to the seat under the 
apple-tree at the foot of The garden and 1 
will come. But I must first see if my 
mother has wakened. I left her asleep.” 
And Gladys ran up to find her sleeping still. 
Looking down upon the pale face, which 
she dared not disturb by so much as a kiss, 
the hot tears her father’s words had stirred 
sprang in floods to her eyes. But there was 
no time to grieve, and she went softly down 
the stairs, drying her eyes as she went, and 
sending Huldah up to guard the sleeper, 
ran down the path to the seat where she 
had read the letter from “ the friend,” and 
where Richard had promised her to watch 
over Roger till they met again. 

As she approached Dick’s mother the 
14 


2o8 


One Little Life. 


woman opened her arms, and, before Gladys 
could conquer her astonishment, broke 
forth : 

“You brave little girl ! you noble child ! 
You spoke kindly to me and to my boy, 
God bless you ! and put a new life in his 
heart ; and I can never love you or thank 
you enough. Nothing decent ever took any 
notice of him before. And to think I 
should come to tell you of new trouble ! 
But you must let me bear it with you. 
You must let me stay and help nurse your 
mother. I am used to nursing ; and O, you 
don’t know how many ways I could help 
you. I couldn’t talk before those other 
women, but promise me you will let me stay.” 

“Yes, yes, I shall only be too glad. I 
need some one to help me with mother at 
night. But tell me what — what about our 
boys ? ” 

“ Nothing about Roger, sweet girl, but — 
but — ” still stroking Gladys’s hair nerv- 
ously — “ but the little one, the golden-haired, 
blue-eyed one — ” 


“Friend” in Need and in Deed. 209 

“ Willie ! ” gasped Gladys, suddenly, re- 
membering she had not seen him for hours. 

“Yes, dear. Don’t be frightened — it is 
better so. He can never go wrong. They 
are so safe who go young, and — ” Gladys’s 
face was ghastly — “ he came down with the 
other boys to fish,” she went on hurriedly ; 
“ they went beyond the pond up the brook. 
He stayed alone by the pond, wading out to 
get lilies, and — ” 

“ And is dead ! did you say ? Dead ! 
My little Willie — dead ! ” and Gladys in 
vain tried to grasp the truth of the words. 

“ Yes, dear. The men from the mill 
found him in the water and brought him to 
my house, and were going to bring him on 
here ; but I wouldn’t let it be done until — 
until I had tried to prepare you for the 
shock — until you had been told. I want to 
stay here and help you get ready for him. 
My husband i#at home — ” Gladys glanced 
anxiously at her — “ and he is sober, and he 
will not let them bring the child till I go 
back again. But — ” 


210 


One Little Life. 


Her words fell on dulled ears, for Gladys 
for the first time in her life fainted, and fell 
unconscious at her feet. It did not take 
long to restore her with Huldah’s ready 
help, but one swoon followed another so 
swiftly that hours passed before conscious- 
ness of where she was and what had befallen 
returned to the overtasked child. When it 
did come she was lying on the white bed in 
the so-called spare chamber, sacred to such 
hospitality as the parsonage could offer ; 
and bending over her was her father, in a 
state of tremulous anxiety, and beside him 
a strange lady who seemed to her more 
beautiful than any being that she had ever 
seen before. She was tall and slender, with 
a gentle, gracious face and manner; so un- 
like any thing Gladys had ever seen that she 
seemed indeed to belong to another world. 
Her gray eyes looked pitiful and tender, and 
the crown of silver hair dfd not seem to 
have any power to make the face look old. 

Gladys gazed at her as she stood talking 
with her father, and closed her eyes with the 


“Friend” in Need and in Deed. 21 i 


restful feeling that reading her precious let- 
ter gave. Then, through her dreamy semi- 
consciousness, she heard her father say : 

“ She is the one comfort of my life, madam. 
She has been mistress of my home and 
mother to the younger children, and the 
best child that ever lived to her mother and 
to me. It was so good of you to come, 
madam. When I saw the effect of this 
shock upon her I could think of no one to 
help her but Edith. I had forgotten she 
was away, and I sent Walter to beg her to 
come at once.” 

“ She will not be back for a week. I was 
making a little visit to Ernest, who is as dear 
to me as if he were my own son,” she said 
softly, “ and I knew through him a good deal 
about your daughter. Of course I wanted 
to come at once. You must not think it an 
intrusion if I stay at least until Edith re- 
turns. This child is evidently utterly over- 
strained in nerve and brain, and in no con- 
dition to meet the next few days alone.” 

Noticing that Gladys stirred uneasily she 


212 


One Little Life. 


placed her finger on her lips and turned to 
the bedside as the father left the room. . 

Gladys did not open her eyes, but the hot 
tears stole from under the closed lids; tears 
of sorrow for the little boy that died, strangely 
mingled with joy that her father really loved 
her, and with the consciousness of a great, 
restful, brooding presence all about her, of 
a voice that spoke tenderly, of a sweet breath 
across her cheek, and kind arms that lifted 
her and folded her, as her own mother 
never had done, close and warm against 
her heart. Not a word was said, but for 
some time she held her there and let her sob 
her heart out without a word, and then, when 
she laid her back upon her pillow, she said: 

“ I got your letter, dear, and came to be 
with Ernest so as to be near you if you 
needed me. Can you trust me to take care 
of you just for to-night ? ” 

“ O, yes ; but I want to get up now to 
take care of mother. She needs me.” 

“ Can you trust mother with me too, just 
for to-night — mother and father and the 


“Friend"’ in Need and in Deed. 213 

little boys? Walter and Tommy have gone 
home to Ernest with Mr. Marston. Mrs. 
Gilbert will stay with us and help me with 
your mother. The house is all in order and 
the kind neighbors have gone home.” 

“And mother? Does mother know?” 
whispered Gladys, the hot tears starting 
afresh. 

“Not yet, dear; but I have promised 
your father to tell her myself. I am not 
willing you should do it. You can trust her 
to me, can you not ? ” And Gladys gave 
for answer only a gentle grasp of the hand 
in which her own was held. Still, as the 
lady moved away, Gladys’s eyes followed 
her wistfully. 

“ I understand,” she said gently, turning 
back to her side. “You want to know 
about Willie. His little room is all ready, 
and this evening, when it is quiet, they will 
bring him home. If you rest now you may 
go and see him after they have laid him in 
his little bed. Leave every thing to me to- 
night, and to-morrow you shall take care of 


214 


One Little Life. 


them all if you wish.” And, closing the 
shutters, the lady went softly away, like a 
sorrowful angel, to break the sad news to 
the mother, who seemed herself upon the 
borders of the better world. 

Fortunately for herself she was too fever- 
ish and delirious to listen or comprehend. 
And, glad to be relieved from so painful a 
task, the stranger gave herself to the patient 
nursing of the sufferer, bathing the hot face 
and soothing her until at last, after a little 
sleep, she awoke in her right mind. 

“I want my children,” she said wearily. 
“ I want my boys, I want Roger ; and tell 
me where is Gladys. Gladys never went 
away and stayed away from me before.” 

“ Gladys is resting this afternoon. She 
became over-tired, and I am taking her 
place. You don’t know me, but I am 
Edith’s friend.” 

But the sufferer only moaned, “ I want 
my children — my boys.” 

“ Roger is too far away,” said Mrs. 
Thorne soothingly, “and Walter and 


‘‘Friend” in Need and in Deed. 215 

Tommy are visiting Ernest to-day. I can 
send their father for tliem if you wish.” 

She seemed to waver for a moment, and 
then she said : 

“ No. If Gladys sent them it was because 
she needed a rest. Poor child ! she does 
need to rest. I can wait till morning to see 
them. But Willie — I can have Willie, can I 
not ? ” 

“Willie is away too,” said Mrs. Thorne 
gently. 

‘‘ But I must have one. Where is Willie ? ” 

“ He is asleep, dear Mrs. Gray. You 
would not wish him to come if he is asleep, 
would you ? ” 

But strive as they would, the sick woman’s 
longing would not be quieted ; and though 
Gladys crept up and sat beside her, her 
weakened mind could not be diverted from 
the thought of Willie. 

“ I will not wake him,” she moaned. 
“ He loves to sleep with me. When he was 
a little child he always was the one who 
loved to get into ‘ mother’s bed.’ ” And with 


2i6 


One Little Life. 


her trembling, restless hands she tried to 
smooth the pillow and turn away the clothes 
to make a place for him. And there in the 
dusk of the evening his father brought him 
in his arms and laid him softly down in his 
mother’s bed. With a great sigh of content 
she threw her arms over the coverlet and 
tried to rise to cover the cold little face with 
her kisses. It was a terrible moment to 
them all, but God was merciful. She fell 
back upon the pillow murmuring : 

“ I’ll not wake him. Good-night, Willie, 
boy. Mother loves to have you come and 
creep into her bed.” And then the restless 
fingers ceased to quiver, and the flickering 
smile came and went over the wan face. 
Just once she opened her eyes wide and 
smiled at Gladys. 

“You go and rest, child,” she whispered. 
“You take care of the other boys till they 
go to sleep. I’ll take care of little Will.” 
And while Gladys and the stranger friend 
stood and watched, and the husband stood 
with bowed head by the side of his dead 


“Friend” in Need and in Deed. 217 

child, and Mrs. Gilbert waited by the win- 
dow, the yellow moon crept up and sent a 
broad stream of light into the darkened 
room. It fell full on the child’s sweet face, 
crowned with its halo of golden hair, and 
full on the mother’s face, from which years 
of pain and sorrow had passed in one mys- 
tic hour. 

Mrs. Thorne put her arm around Gladys 
and led her gently from the room. The 
mother had fallen asleep with the child. 

If the funeral could have been after 
Gladys’s own heart she would have sat in 
silence beside her dead, with her brothers, 
and her new friend, and Ernest, and Edith, 
and kind Mr. Marston, and Mrs. Gilbert, 
and Huldah, and no more. Then she would 
have had no talk, and only a prayer such as 
Ernest Marston could pray, and a hymn be- 
side the grave. But well she knew such de- 
parture from Edgefield traditions would be 
an innovation not to be tolerated in a fam- 
ily that belonged to the parish far more 


2i8 


One Little Life. 


than it did to itself, and well she knew that 
such a service would wound many of her 
parents’ life-long friends. So Edgefield bur- 
ied its pastor’s wife and child after its own 
fashion, reluctantly allowing one grave for 
the two because Gladys begged to have it 
so. Poor child ! They little knew how 
there rang, even through her sleep, her 
mother’s pleading to have Willie sleep in 
her bed, and that when that voice was 
hushed she heard over and over again her 
father’s voice saying, 

“ If your mother dies you will be largely 
responsible.” 

True, she had heard him say what she 
was to him, but it would take a strong and 
steady love to extract the sting from words 
like these. Altogether, so overwrought was 
her conscience that but for the steady sup- 
porting heart of the friend, who never left 
her, the child would scarcely have been 
held back from frightful illness. Working 
always beyond her strength, overworn with 
nursing, torn with doubts and fears as to 


“Friend” in Need and in Deed. 219 

the rightness of her own course and with 
terror as to Roger’s, under her father’s dis- 
pleasure, shocked and grieved and crushed, 
it is not strange that with a curious apathy 
she let things take their course, and offered 
no resistance when the neighbors came, and 
cooked, and scrubbed, and kept Huldah in 
a battle between her anger and her grief. 
She gave herself to her father and the boys, 
and let the kind souls work their will out- 
side. And then she sat, white and tearless, 
in the church, with those two coffins between 
her and the altar, and held fast to the fright- 
ened Tommy’s hand and heard the ministers 
from neighboring towns talk of her blessed 
mother in a way that showed they knew 
nothing about her; and she sat still and list- 
ened while the preacher from Bentley Four 
Corners prayed for the prodigal son, and for 
the young handmaiden of the Lord who 
must take a mother’s place to the boys, 
though every thing in her impelled her to 
rush to the pulpit and thrust her hand over 
his mouth. She bore it while the whole 


220 


One Little Life. 


congregation filed between her and the cof- 
fins and gazed at her dear ones, and then 
took a good look at the survivors and 
passed on. She even went herself because 
her father expected it, and stood a moment, 
blind and dizzy, by the side of her dead. 
She endured, she never knew how, the mo- 
ments in the church-yard with all the village 
waiting in the background, and only con- 
scious of a great desire to lie down herself 
in the open grave under the trees, and sleep 
and sleep and sleep — and never wake again. 

It all seemed unreal and strange to her, 
and she had not come out of the dazed con- 
dition when at night her friend said to her, 
“Try to sleep, my child, for to-morrow I 
think I shall take you away.” 

She did arouse herself to say, sadly, 

“But you know, dear Mrs. Thorne, I 
must live now to save the other boys.” 

“ That’s true,” answered Mrs. Thorne, 
“and I mean to save you for them; and the 
first step toward that is to take you as far 
away from them as we can go.” 


/ 



CHAPTER XIII. 


MR. GRAY MAKES A DISCOVERY. 


UT to-morrow was too soon to take 
Gladys away from the home made 
desolate by its double sorrow. Glad- 
ys could not endure the thought of leaving 
those who had so long depended upon her 
for cheer ; but so comforting was the 
presence of the friend that she ventured to 
beg her to stay on and on indefinitely. 

“It is not best for me to stay here with 
you,” she answerd, gently. “ This is the 
time for you to dra-w near to your father’s 
heart and for him to draw near to you. 
This will be easier if there is no stranger in 
the house. But I shall be with the Mars- 
tons a little while, and can see you very 
often. You have something to do for Nel- 
lie,” she added, feeling the need of diverting 
the girl from too exclusive thought of her 


222 


One Little Life. 


father and the boys. “ Your heart has been 
with your father and with Roger in time 
past, and it has seemed to you that Nellie 
would come on all right by herself, since 
she was only a girl. Meantime Nellie has 
been growing large and strong and healthy, 
a well-meaning-child, but with no idea that 
.she had home duties or cares, because you 
have borne them all for her. Now is the 
time for her to have a share. Give her 
many little things to do for Walter and 
Tommy and for your father, and give the boys 
little helpful things to do for her. She is 
thoughtless of the comfort of others because 
you have spoiled her; but she is teachable 
and sweet. She takes kindly to me, and I 
am going to have a little talk with her my- 
self. She is quite old enough to understand 
the blessedness of service, and soon she 
ought to be one of those who love to 
serve.” 

And she did have a little talk with her, 
opening the girl’s eyes to what her sister’s 
life had been, and finding her heart, as 


Mr. Gray Makes a Discovery. 223 

the heart of girlhood is always found if 
rightly touched, eager and ready to help. 
She had a little talk with the pastor also, in 
the gloom of his study ; opening his eyes to 
the fact that if the burden of these three 
younger children and of the household 
were allowed to come wholly upon Gladys 
she would not wait long to join the mother 
and little brother whom he mourned. Sad- 
dened by his bereavement, and aroused by 
Gladys’s recent attack to the knowledge 
that she too, was mortal, it was not difficult 
to persuade him that she must be spared. 
He fully meant to spare and to cheer her 
instead of depending on her to lift him from 
his own depression, but Mrs. Thorne read 
him too well to believe that, even with the 
best intentions, he would know how to com- 
fort and strengthen the girl. Still, if she 
could accustom his mind to the idea that he 
was to get on without; holding her responsible 
for his own comfort of mind or body it 
would be great gain, and prepare him for 

the father sacrifice of sparing her altogether 
15 


224 One Little Life. 

for awhile. For, in order to break up the 
routine of care that was fast diminishing her 
mental and bodily vitality, she foresaw that 
a change was inevitable. But change must 
be under such conditions as would leave all 
the rest comfortable and contented or it 
would fail of any good for Gladys. 

Thus a few weeks went swiftly by in 
which she faithfully tried to carry out the 
wishes of the friend as to the younger chil- 
dren and to make the home as bright as 
possible for her father. But notwithstand- 
ing her conscientious efforts both to eat and 
to sleep, and her many cheery visits from 
Edith, who had returned full of spirits, and 
many quiet and serious talks with the 
friend, she did not seem to be able to rally 
in health or strength. 

While matters were in this condition there 
was a long consultation on the piazza of 
Squire Freeland’s mansion, which ended in 
a visit from Mr. Marston to the study of 
Parson Gray. At the close of one of their 
pleasant talks about the world of men and 


Mr. Gray Makes a Discovery. 225 

books Mr. Marston said, as he rose 
to go: 

*‘By the way, how is Gladys these days.? 
We think she looks very worn and ill. My 
Edith has grown so fond of her, and goes 
back to school so reluctantly, that I prom- 
ised to ask if you could not spare Gladys 
for a year at school. ” 

Mr. Gray pushed his spectacles up from 
his forehead and frowned. 

“ I am not asking for Gladys’s sake only,” 
added Mr. Marston, in a conciliatory tone, 
‘‘but I want her association for Edith. 
Gladys is younger, but life has been so much 
more serious and practical to her that she 
makes just the right element to be in con- 
tact with a girl like mine. And they are so 
fond of each other that I cannot bear to 
have them separated. If you would allow 
me to have her this one year, and send her 
with Edith, I should feel all the expense 
a trifle in comparison to the gain to my 
child.” 

And while he talked the frown deepened 


226 


One Little Life. 


updn Mr. Gray’s forehead, until a negative 
reply seemed certain. 

“ It is very good of you to think of it/* he 
said, coldly, for before a friend who had 
been so kind, treating the parish and pastor 
as if Edgefield were his church home, he 
did not like to show the annoyance that he 
felt. He thought he had been very kind to 
Gladys since her mother died, and he cer- 
tainly had given her the joy of loving him 
without repulse. He had often curbed the 
spirit of fault-finding, too ; and this was his 
reward ! Here were these strange people 
watching her pallor, noticing every sign of 
fatigue, and taking her practically under 
their care — implying by so doing that he 
himself failed in his duty to his child. But 
he veiled his inward exasperation and went 
on quietly : 

“You forget, perhaps, that Gladys has a 
younger sister who needs her influence 
quite as much as your daughter can. She 
has three brothers to whom Providence has 
decreed that she shall stand in a mother's 


Mr. Gray Makes a Discovery. 227 

place. I will not speak of myself — of my 
own broken health — but I think Gladys will 
not belie her training and forsake her fam- 
ily as my son has done. I am quite willing, 
however, to leave the decision to herself.” 
And he arose with a quick movement as if 
to call her. 

“ No matter about it to-night," said Mr. 
Marston, rising. “Indeed, I see what her 
decision would be, and it would be better 
to spare her the temptation.” 

But it was too late for that, for Edith, 
who had come down with her father, while 
the interview was going on in the study had 
told Gladys all about it out under the apple- 
tree in the yard. And Gladys, who did not 
see how it could be, yet was so excited by 
the thought that she hurried Edith into 
the study just as Mr. Marston was about to 
take his leave. 

“ O, Mr. Gray, can she go ? " began Edith, 
eagerly. 

But one glance at her father's face suf- 
ficed for Gladys, and her new-born hope 


228 


One Little Life. 


died almost before her heart had felt its first 
faint throb. 

“ I have nothing to say about it,” an- 
swered the clergyman, in a freezing tone. 
“ It is a question for Gladys to decide.” 

“ Then you could spare her ? You would 
give your consent.^ ” went on the enthusi- 
astic girl. How can I ever thank you 
enough, Mr. Gray ! ” And she moved to- 
ward him with outstretched hands. 

“ I said nothing about consent,” said the 
pastor, bitterly. “One of my children left 
me without regard to that. The others 
may take the same course, and I shall try 
to endure it ; that is all.*’ 

“But Roger is doing so well, Mr. Gray,” 
broke in Edith, impulsively; “and I am 
sure he is sorry he left home that way, and 
would be so glad if you would forgive him. 
Indeed, when I was in New York I saw him 
often, and he told me as much himself.” 

“You saw him ! He talked to you about 
his home ? ' said Mr. Gray, in sudden an- 
ger. “ Then you have known where he was 


Mr. Gray Makes a Discovery. 229 

all this time? "he added, turning sharply 
upon Gladys, who looked from one to an- 
other in dismay. 

“ No, she has not known," said Mr. 
Marston, re-entering the room. ‘‘I have 
known, and Mrs. Thorne, the friend of all 
young people who are in trouble, has known. 
But we did not tell Gladys lest she should 
be asked by those whom we wished to be 
in ignorance. I learned that the two boys 
were in New York looking for work. I 
gave them the addresses of two friends of 
my son. One friend was formerly in my 
o^^ business house as a clerk, and is now 
in business for himself. He and Ernest 
w'ere lads together, and they are great 
cronies, and bound to help other boys and 
young men along when they get a chance." 

He did not add, as he might have done, 
that he had himself set up the young man 
in business, and that it was conducted with 
a view to human welfare first and to money- 
making afterward. . But he went on to say, 
“Ernest wrote his friend that if the boys 


230 One Little Life. 

applied to him he was to take them in 
himself or see them placed with some one 
of those who, like Ernest, were interested 
in thoughtless lads. You see, Mr. Gray, 
neither one of those two was a bad boy, but 
they were getting ready to be bad as fast as 
they could. It was time somebody reached 
out a hand to hold them back.” 

“ But how do you know they are not bad, 
Mr. Marston? You and your son have in- 
terested yourselves in them and given them 
work. I am grateful for it, I assure you, 
though I think I ought to have been con- 
consulted. But how do you know about 
the way they spend the nights.^ A boy 
who would deceive his father as Roger did, 
play truant, run away from home, and break 
into—” 

“ No, no, father,” interrupted Gladys, 
“not that, please ; “don’t say that.” 

“Well, leave it out then. There is 
enough. Heaven knows, to break a father’s 
heart without that ; I say a boy who would 
do those things isn’t safe in a great city.” 


Mr. Gray Makes a Discovery. 231 

‘‘But your son is safe,” said Mr. Marston, 
quietly. “ I gave him two letters — one to 
Ernest’s business friend and one to a wom- 
an. You have seen that woman, Mr. Gray, 
and had her here in your house. While she 
was here, and long before, both of these 
boys were in her own home in New York. 
While she is away they have the kind care 
of a woman as good and true as herself. 
When she is sure of them — sure it is safe to 
let them go — she will see that the right sort 
of home receives them. And until they are 
noble and right, and ready to help other 
people to become so, they will never be left 
to themselves. So, my dear friend,” he 
added, seriously, laying his hand on Mr. 
Gray’s shoulder as he sat with his head be- 
tween his hands leaning upon his desk, 
“you see your prayers have been answered, 
only not in the way you expected, and your 
boy is going to be a good man and a com- 
fort to you yet. His mother’s death and 
little Willie’s loss have been sad blows to 
him, and I can assure you he will be ready 


232 One Little Life. 

to come to you as soon as your heart is 
ready to let him come.” 

“ But how carl he come .? ” asked Mr. 
Gray, lifting his head and trying to hide 
the traces of sudden tears. “ How can he 
ever show his face here again with that 
horrible suspicion attaching to his name.? 
Why, Mr. Marston, I tell you I have not 
walked Edgefield streets since I heard of 
the robbery of the Corners store without 
feeling as if, whenever I passed, men whis- 
pered behind me, ‘There goes the minister 
whose son is a thief.' I exchanged pulpits 
with Brother Jones, of Bentley, and I fan- 
cied I heard the people, through the hymn 
and even through my own sermon and 
prayer, crying it up to me from the pews.” 

“ Poor, dear papa ! ” said Gladys, stroking 
his hair as if he were a child. 

“You were too sensitive about it,” said 
Mr. Marston, steadily; “there was no evi- 
dence whatever against the boys, and they 
were not guilty. But, feven if they had 
been, all danger is past. The proprietor of 


Mr. Gray Makes a Discovery. 233 

the store has refused to prosecute or to inves- 
tigate the matter further. Indeed, he is no 
longer the proprietor, and his loss has been 
made good by the present owner. So send 
for your boy as soon as you like, neighbor. 
He is as safe as my boy, and as innocent, 
too, for that matter." And, drawing Edith’s 
hand within his arm, they strolled away 
down the homeward road. 

And after they were gone the pastor still 
sat with bowed head and humbled heart, 
for God had, indeed, been good to him. 
And Gladys would not leave him, though 
he gave no sign of pleasure in her presence, 
but sat as close as she could, and after 
a while slipped her thin hand into his and 
told him the story of Ernest’s having bought 
out the store at Bentley Four Corners, and 
kept the old proprietor to take charge of it 
on condition that no more liquor should 
there be drank, or bought, or sold. 

‘‘It used to be such a bad place for the 
young men, papa, and it was there Dick’s 
father got most of the whisky with which 


234 


One Little Life. 


he made his wife’s life a misery. And he 
has put a young man there whom he knew 
before and whom he can trust, and,” she 
added, before she thought how strangely 
the words must sound to her father, “ he is 
one of the band of servants, you know.” 

“Whose servants-?” asked Mr. Gray, lift- 
ing his head and eyeing her curiously ; “ a 
servant of Ernest, do you mean ?” 

“ No, father,” said Gladys, falteringly, “I 
only meant — ” 

“Meant what!” he interrupted, with 
something of the old sharpness in his tone. 

“A servant of Jesus Christ,” she an- 
swered, softly and solemnly’ 

He turned abruptly, and, raising her chin 
in his hand, looked long and steadily into 
her lifted eyes. Evidently satisfied by his 
scrutiny that the child was in her right 
mind he relaxed his hold and said, in a 
softened tone, as if the truth as to the secret 
of this little life were dawning slowly upon 
his mind, 

“ Tell me all about it, my child.” 


Mr. Gray Makes a Discovery. 235 

** It isn’t much to tell,” she said, infinitely 
relieved that he did not seem displeased with 
her. “It only means that Ernest and a 
great many men and boys, and Mrs. Thorne 
and a great many women and girls, are all 
in one band of servants, or one fellowship 
of service, as they call it, and they must all 
try to love other people into being good, and 
be willing to serve every body every-where. 
And they all let each other know when there 
is a chance to help somebody ; and they are 
all glad when they find some one to help, 
and not angry with them for needing to be 
helped.” 

“But they cannot do something for every 
one, can they ? ” he asked, now genuinely 
interested, and anxious to draw her out. 

“ O, yes, they can; something — always.” 

“ What, for example, for any one wicked 
and selfish and hard ? ” 

“ Love him,” she answered, simply. 

“ And it is this band that has been watch- 
ing over my boy ? It is from this band that 
a young man comes to live at Bentley Four 


236 0N15 Little Life. 

Corners to try to save the place from the 
curse of drink ? It is from this band that 
an angel comes into my home in our time 
of affliction ? It is women like this who are 
opening their homes for the tempted lads in 
our cities and trying to win them before 
they fall into the snares of the tempters.? 
And it is to this band that my little daughter 
belongs ? ” he added, putting his arm around 
her and drawing her head where she never 
remembered seeing any child’s head rest 
before, close down against his heart. “ It 
is this, then,” he continued, as if to himself, 
“ that has made her the greatest among us, 
for it has made her the willing servant of 
us all.” 

“ It has only made me love every body,” 
said Gladys, happy beyond measure to be so 
near her father; “and it has never seemed 
like service since I learned the secret of the 
joy in it,” she said. 

“Who taught you, dear.?” he asked, re- 
membering with a pang that she had not 
learned from him. 


Mr. Gray Makes a Discovery. 237 

‘‘Edith and Ernest first— Ernest is a sort 
of elder brother of all the band — and Mrs. 
Thorne most of all.” 

“ She is one of your most earnest workers, 
I should judge ? ” 

“ She ! She is the mother and the teacher 
and the friend, and yet, more than any body, 
she is the servant, of us all.” 




CHAPTER XIV. 


BRIGHT WAYS OPEN. 


'ONG after the house was still, and 
Gladys fast asleep, Pastor Gray sat 
alone in the dark in his study, and 
one by one the years of his life swept by in 
solemn procession. And as they passed he 
saw dropping wearily by the way-side, first 
the bowed form of the aged mother who had 
made herself a slave that he might be kept 
at college. Then the sister, who taught, 
year after year, the hard schools of a coun- 
try town that his expenses might be met at 
the theological seminary; and then the other 
sister who, later, gave up her own prospect 
of marriage and stayed at home to care for 
the old folks and spare him, the young pastor^ 
just beginning life, the trouble of having his 
parents in his own house. And then the wife, 
who took for granted that her duty was to 


Bright Ways Open. 239 

minister, and who suffered for years and 
died for lack of any ministry from him. 
And, last, this daughter, who made the fifth 
of those who had so magnified his office 
that they had gladly been his servants that 
he might be “a servant of Jesus Christ.” 

It was a sad night. As he restlessly paced 
the floor his eye fell upon an open book 
which he had been reading in the afternoon. 
So strong was the force of habit that his first 
thought was one of resentment that it 
should not have been returned to its proper 
place; but as he took it in his hand his eye 
fell upon Christina Rossetti’s poem, ‘‘From 
House to Home,” and, holding it close to 
the light, he read, in the low, earnest voice 
that often charmed his congregation: 

“ Therefore, O friend, I would not, if I might, 
Rebuild my house of lies, wherein I joyed 
One time to dwell : my soul shall walk in white, 
Cast down but not destroyed ! 

Therefore, in patience I possess my soul. 

Yea, therefore as a flint I set my face 
To cast down to build up again the whole, 

But in a distant place.” 

16 


240 One Little Life. 

Earlier than usual the next morning he 
came forth with an air of resolute courage 
to which Gladys was quite unused, and after 
breakfast, in which he was so kindly attent- 
ive as to surprise the children, he took his 
way to Squire Freeland's house and had a 
long interview with Mr. Marston and after- 
ward a few words with the friend. When 
he came home he called Gladys to his side 
and said, kindly : 

“ I have had a talk with Mr. Marston and 
your friend about Roger. I always meant, 
when Roger was old enough, to give him a 
college training if he showed any desire to 
have it. I have saved a little money to that 
end. When Roger disappointed me so sorely 
I resolved to let him look out for himself, 
and I was intending to take that money and 
get a six months’ vacation and go abroad. 
My plan was all made when, yesterday, I 
saw how wrong it would be for me to go and 
leave the care of the children entirely upon 
you. Now, I have decided to take that care 
myself. The friend promises to supply me 


Bright Ways Open. 241 

with a good governess, should I need one 
for the children, and invites Nellie to make 
her a visit in the course of the winter. And 
you are to go to school with Edith, not by 
Mr. Marston’s bounty, but by the money I 
have saved. It isn’t worth while to waste 
words talking about it,” he added, smiling, 
as she began to protest; you have been an 
obedient child too long to begin now to re- 
bel.” And, giving her a kiss, he went away 
to his books. 

But Gladys followed him, and, putting 
her head in at the door, she said : 

“ O, father, think how many, many years, 
and you have never yet had a vacation of 
aiTy kind. I don’t think I could go. In- 
deed — indeed, papa, if you are going to love 
me ” — and she shut the door softly and 
crept close to his side — “ I don’t see how I 
could bear to go away.” ^ 

“ Nonsense, child ! ” he said, with an at- 
tempt to be playful that was a sorrowful 
failure. “It is time you were with young 
people ; and as for me, I am going to take a 


242 


One Little Life. 


vacation. I am going very soon to see 
Roger and to talk with him about his future, 
and if he wants to go to college, why, I be- 
lieve I could do something that would help 
the dear boy through.” 

And Gladys went away astonished and 
hushed and subdued, it was so evident that 
her father’s heart was happy in the idea of 
sacrifice and service for his children, and 
that he no longer looked upon them as so 
many dispensations to be endured. The 
Healer of the blind had touched his eyes. 
She stole away without more words, but she 
talked to the friend about leaving the home, 
and Mrs. Thorne bade her hasten to be 
ready, and not to dare to put her small self 
between her father and the manifest dealing 
of his Master. He had been drawn to make 
the sacrifice. What right had she to pre- 
vent.^ And so, with some misgivings, the 
small additions to her wardrobe went on. 
Her father went away to see Roger, and 
Edith and Mrs. Gilbert both came to sew 
for her while he was gone. 


Bright Ways Open. 


243 


Gladys was surprised to find how glad she 
could be over new frocks and a few ribbons, 
and pretty things such as few young girls 
know how to go without ; but in spite of sad 
memories her heart found out that she was 
young, and in spite of herself it would sing 
a little over the work. At this good sign 
Huldah and Mrs. Gilbert nodded to each 
other approvingly. Mrs. Gilbert was one of 
the few people to whom Huldah took 
kindly, perhaps because, with every indica- 
tion of having been bred a lady, she yet 
was willing to take hold of any kind of 
work. She had been in the habit of coming 
now and then to help about the household 
ever since the death of little Willie, and her 
swift needle proved a great help to Gladys 
in this time of hurried preparation. It had 
proved a great help to Huldah also, who 
had been in the habit of taking mysterious 
parcels down to the old house, which Mrs. 
Gilbert returned and Huldah placed in rows 
and piles along the cupboard shelves of her 
room. She did not confide in Gladys till the 


244 


One Little Life. 


eve of her departure, when she announced, 
abruptly : 

“ S’pose ye didn’t know. Miss Gladys, or if 
ye did know you disremembered it, that me 
and Hiram Higgins, Squire Freeland’s hired 
man, decided much as sixteen year ago that 
he shouldn’t take up with nobody but me, 
nor I nuther with nobody but him. Your 
mother, she knew all about it, but I wasn’t 
goin’ to leave a woman as good as she was 
— that took me from a drunken father when 
I wasn’t wuth a cent — to work for no livin’ 
man that walked on two legs. And so I told 
Hiram, and I told him, too, that I wasn’t 
goin’ to be the laughin’-stock of the hull 
neighborhood by havin’ of him hangin’ 
round all lop-sided and down in the mouth. 
And if I was wuth waitin’ fur to wait like a 
man; and if I wusn’t, then find somebody 
that could jump at the chance. Anyhow, I 
wouldn’t leave so long as your mother had 
a passel of children on her lap. And Hi- 
ram he waited and saved up and saved up, 
and now he’s got a little farm of his own. 


Bright Ways Open. 245 

And I kept layin’ by, too, and Mrs. Gilbert 
she’s been sewin' for me till I’ve got as good 
a settin’ eout as any body. But ’tain’t no 
use to be ready, for one thing or nuther’s 
always riz right up to hender. Now the 
family’s smaller, and you are goin’ away, and 
that makes Hiram awfully cantankerous, 
and he says if you can leave the family I 
can, and he ain’t goin’ to wait no more. 
But I’ve told him he’ll hev to wait jest six 
months longer, and if by that time you aint 
had enough of schoolin’ I’ll jest try to git' 
somebody in my place and go and live on 
the farm.” 

But it does seem hard on Hiram, Hul- 
dah,” said Gladys, when she recovered from 
her surprise. “ I am afraid I ought to stay 
at home and let you go, though I don’t 
know — if I were here — how I could live 
without you ! ” 

“ Now, you jest don’t worry. Miss Gladys. 
Hiram’s waited long enough to do it without 
a fuss. If he can’t, let him go and git 
somebody else. I told him to try it, but, 


246 One Little Life. 

poor fellow, he knows nobody wouldn^t 
have him — with his bald head and his false 
uppers! Sometimes I do’ know’s I’ll take 
him myself.” And she tossed her head and 
straightened her buxom form and went away 
to finish the ironing she had left to enlighten 
Gladys as to her matrimonial hopes. 

And Gladys knew she could trust her for 
the six months, yet the prospect made it a 
little harder to go away. And how hard it 
was no one knew but the friend to whom 
she wrote all her fears. Edith was so happy 
in the prospect that Gladys would not shade 
her pleasure by any regrets. But the wrench 
from her father and the children was one 
to make her willing to abandon the whole 
plan. At the last moment a carriage drove 
up and the friend appeared. 

“I did mean to stay in New York and 
have you and Edith spend the night there 
on your way to P School,” she said, em- 

bracing the girls and holding off little Tom- 
my, who had rushed at her with a shout of 
welcome; “but at the last moment I felt I’d 


Bright Ways Open. 247 

better be here for the next few days; and 
you are to go to my house all the same. 
Richard and Roger will be at the train to 
meet you. Ernest will need me, now Edith 
is gone, and Gladys will feel safe if I am 
here." 

But Gladys could only look her thanks 
and wonder at such patient, helpful love, 
that counted as nothing all labor and fatigue 
if only by its means some soul in trouble 
might be made to rest. And Gladys did 
rest. 

“ Remember, it is a part of the Master’s 
plan, Gladys," the friend had said at part- 
ing. ‘‘ He wants the life to widen, and to 
bless not these home friends alone but many 
more, and so he gives you this chance to 
learn." 

And so began a new era in the patient 
young life of Gladys Gray. It was all so 
wonderful and all so new. She had never 
been ten miles from Edgefield. She had 
never seen a city, or the great pulsing, sunlit 
sea. She had never met young people, save 


248 One Little Life. 

those who lived in her father’s parish and 
the summer strangers who came to board in 
the farm-houses upon the neighboring hills. 
She could no more help her sadness being 
swallowed up in an excited whirlpool of 
new sensations than a prisoned bird let loose 
in upper air could fold its fluttering wings. 

Then at the end of the day there was 
Roger, her little brother, grown taller than 
herself, and looking so like her mother that 
she could hardly restrain her tears; Roger 
quiet, well-mannered, neatly dressed, with a 
certain boyish consciousness that she need 
not be ashamed of him. He told how kind 
his father had been in his offer to educate 
him, but he liked business and meant to 
stick to it. He told her two places were 
offered and Dick made him take the best — 
the easiest work and the best wages; and 
that all these folks that belonged to Ernest 
were good, manly fellows, but Dick was the 
most royal-hearted fellow of them all.” And 
Dick seemed as glad to see her as Roger 
did, and in the one day that they could stay 


Bright Ways Open. 


249 


they talked more than would fill a book and 
saw more than had been seen by Gladys in 
all the previous years of her life. 

Then one more journey up the Hudson, 
whose banks were bright with early autumn 
foliage, and after that the school-life with 
over a hundred girls. Edith was in the very 
center of this life, having made friends of 
every teacher and pupil long ago, and the 
warmth of the welcome for her overflowed 
upon her companion, who had never dreamed 
the world held so many merry, lovely girls 
as these who soon became her friends. But, 
happy as she was in the social life, so new 
and charming to every sense, Gladys did not 
let it steal a moment from the real object of 
her coming. Never lamb turned to green 
pastures with the eagerness with which she 
turned to books. In her haste to gather 
what others had already acquired she might 
have done herself a harm but for the fact 
that she was taking that for which her mind 
had been waiting and athirst for years. 
Edith was astonished to find she had for- 


250 


One Little Life. 


gotten nothing of all they had read together 
in the early summer, and her teachers were 
surprised at the ease with which difficulty 
after difficulty in her studies was met and 
overcome and left behind. 

“ Yet in all this life,” wrote Edith to Er- 
nest, “ she never forgets for an hour whose 
she is and whom she serves. All her own 
work is with quiet promptness put aside 
whenever any girl or even any servant in 
the whole establishment is in trouble or is 
ill. To serve — that is her life ; to learn — 
that is her privilege, and one that, highly as 
she prizes it, is never for a moment allowed 
to stand in the way of the first.” 

“And that is the spirit we are looking 
for,” said the friend, as Ernest read the pas- 
sage aloud as they sat on the piazza. “ God 
has evidently chosen her and means to give 
her to our work if life does not crowd her 
so closely that we cannot give her the train- 
ing she will need.” 

“ She has had no chance at it as yet,” 
sighed Ernest. 


Bright Ways Open. 251 

“ Well, we must not quarrel with God’s 
school. He has evidently been training her 
as we could not. She is to-day, of all the 
young women I have found, the one most 
fitted for the place I hope to have her fill. 
She does not know it, but her power, like all 
true power, lies in the 'genuineness of her 
love. See what it did for Richard’s mother. 
She would do any thing or be any thing for 
that girl.” 

“I know it,” answered Ernest, ‘‘and so 
would Dick himself.” 

“ And since Gladys showed she really 
cared for Mrs. Gilbert, the poor soul, so 
embittered and wretched before, has actually 
been trying the power of loving-kindness 
on that brute of a husband of hers. I don’t 
know with what success, but he has been 
working much more steadily of late, and 
how much the stopping of the Bentley Cor- 
ners groggery may have to do with it I can- 
not say.” 

“ There’s a great work waiting for some- 
body among the factory people at the Cor- 


252 


One Little Life. 


ners,” added Mrs. Thorne. “ I fancy Mrs. 
Gilbert may take hold of it some day with 
Gladys. Her love for her own boy would 
make her a grand sort of mother to a good 
many of them if we could bring her among 
them.” 

“I thought of asking her to take charge 
of the reading-room and the rooms for 
games that I am preparing over the store,” 
said Ernest. 




CHAPTER XV. 


ALL THE LOOSE ENDS GATHERED UP. 




-f 4 ^ heerd nothin’ from the old 

heouse in the medder, hev ye ? 
asked Huldah, as she opened the 
door for Mrs. Thorne. “ Mr. Gray said he 
was afeared ther was suthin’ out er the 
common goin’ on, for he heerd tell deown 
to the drug store that a boy had ben up for 
the doctor. Of course no doctor couldn’t 
be feound. That’s ginerally the way if any 
body’s took suddint. I’d a gone right deown 
myself eft hadn’t been supper-time, and now 
I’ve got it ready Mr. Gray aint here to eat it. 
Beats me the way that man kites reound 
lately ! When Gladys was here you wouldn’t 
’a’ ketched him reound ’mongst the poor 
folks much, and especially sech as them Gil- 
berts. Not but what I like her. She’s good 
as gold; but he’s an ordinary drunken piece.” 



254 One Little Life. 

“ Do you think Mr. Gray has gone there ? ” 
asked Mrs. Thorne. 

“ Waal, ef he has, it’s pure grace ; for it’s 
agin his natur, ef I know Parson Gray. 
He always owed that house a grudge since 
Roger was led away, and I’ve always felt he 
didn’t like much to have the woman round. 
But I dun know — I dun know — ” And she 
gave the tea-pot a shake and blew softly 
down the spout. 

Mrs. Thorne only stopped long enough at 
the tea-table to let Walter run up and ask 
Hiram to come down with the sorrel horse. 
Yet the evening shadows were falling fast 
as they drove up the lane and rapped at 
the battered door of Mrs. Gilbert’s home. 
It was opened by Mr. Gray, who took the 
lady into the silent sitting-room. 

“ The poor man is almost gone,” he said, 
sadly ; “ stricken down this afternoon in 
full strength. His left arm seems par- 
alyzed, but he has regained consciousness 
and speech. I am glad you have come, for 
I will take the horse and drive to town for 


The Loose Ends Gathered Up. 255 

some remedies that are needed, and to see 
if the doctor has returned. He was ten 
miles away, in Langford, when we sent 
before.” 

And the friend put aside her wraps and 
went softly into the sick-room, where, with 
such pity and tenderness in her eyes as 
only hearts that have softened under sorrow 
can show, Martha Gilbert was watching the 
flickering life of the man who had made her 
wretched. 

He seemed troubled, and to be trying to 
talk to her and yet disturbed by the new 
presence. He paused in his speech, and 
looked at the visitor. 

‘^Sit where he cannot see you, please,” 
whispered Martha, pointing to a chair at the 
foot of the bed. And Mrs. Thorne took 
her place out of sight, and sitting there she 
heard him say : 

I must tell you all about it, Martha. I 
have been drunk and cruel, but I never 
stole before, and I’ve been working lately 

to try to save the money and pay it back, 
17 


256 


One Little Life. 


and there isn’t enough. It’s in the old 
bureau, but there isn’t enough.” 

“Never mind, Richard, I have enough. 
I will see that it all goes back.” 

“It ought to go to Mr. Marston,” he 
added, eagerly, “for Marston paid it be- 
cause he thought the parson’s boy stole it, 
and he wanted the matter hushed up. He 
bought the store and he paid enough to 
cover the loss. But the parson’s boy had 
nothing to do with it, and Dick had nothing 
to do with it. I was in the store, half drunk, 
and I started to go out and went into the 
back store, instead of out at the back-door 
as I meant to go. I sat down among the bar- 
rels, and no one saw me, and I went to sleep. 
And when I woke up they were all gone, and 
I began to look around for the whisky and 
came upon the money-drawer, and I opened 
it, not meaning to take any thing at all. 
But it was all there, and — and I don’t know 
what it was, Martha ; it must have been the 
drink. Something made me take it, and 
with- it in. my hand I got through the cellar- 


The Loose Ends Gathered Up. 257 

window and carried it in my hand tight 
as I could till I found I was too much 
intoxicated to get home. And then I lay 
down beside the road and went to sleep. 
And when I woke the money was all gone.” 

“ I understand it all, she said, soothingly. 

While you lay there asleep Dick came 
along the road and saw you. He saw the 
money, too, in your hand. He knew I had 
been paid some money for my work, and 
he thought you had taken it from me and 
would lose it. So he took it, and that night 
he and Roger went away. But Dick came 
back a few nights after and brought me al- 
most all of it. And since then he has sent 
the rest, and it shall go back to Mr. Mars- 
ton, every penny of it, just as soon as I can 
get it to him.” 

“Martha, Martha,” said the dying man, 
restlessly, “ it wasn’t — it wasn’t me.” 

“ No, no, Richard, it wasn’t you. It was 
the drink. First and last, and always, it 
was the drink.” 

But he did not hear her words. With the 


258 One Little Life. 

last effort to shake from his soul the sin that 
had weighed it down the poor wrecked life 
went out, and the time had come for the 
ministry of the patient waiting friend. She 
drew the poor woman away and sent Hiram 
for the kind neighbors from the nearest 
house, and sent a telegram to Dick; and 
three days later the old house was closed, 
and Martha Gilbert, clad in sober black, 
had taken up her abode in the home of 
Parson Gray. 

Close beside her through the sad, sad 
days, seemingly as much at home with the 
bare walls and straw bed and scanty fare of 
the old house in the meadow as in her own 
luxurious city home, the friend never left 
her till all was done. 

Standing at the parsonage-door, as she 
was about to go back to Ernest, Martha 
said, as she laid her trembling hand in that 
of Mrs. Thorne : 

“ You have done so much for me that I am 
ashamed to ask. Yet there is one thing more 
I should so like to have you undertake.” 


The Loose Ends Gathered Up. 259 

I have done for you only what women 
ought to be happy to do for each other; 
what you will do for many and many a poor 
soul in trouble if you become the helper 
that I need and that I think God has been 
training you to be. There are so many 
women whom I want to see helped, but 
whom I cannot reach — old women with 
tired hearts, young women who have no joy 
in their lives. You can do for them what I 
cannot.” 

‘‘Ah, but my chance for all that has 
passed,” said Martha, sadly. “ I might 
have been a useful woman — ” 

“Might have been?” said Mrs. Thorne, 
cheerily. “You are just ready to begin to 
live. Your life is before and not behind 
you. Ernest tells me that of all the young 
men he knows there is not one who has the 
royal, generous, helpful heart of your boy. 
They write to each other constantly. He 
is at work all the time that he can spare in 
being eyes and legs for Ernest ; in investi- 
gating cases and causes of misery and want 


26o One Little Life. 

and sin. And if he does not disappoint us he 
will grow, in time, to be hands for Ernest too ; 
his chief helper in carrying out his projects 
for good. You are surely not going to be 
behind your boy. But I forgot,”she added, 
hastily, seeing Mr. Marston coming down 
the road in the old gig that had been such 
a comfort to them all the summer through. 

“Yes,” said Martha, drawing back so as 
to be out of sight, within the door. “You 
remember the night he died ? You heard 
what he said to me ? Here is the money. I 
want Mr. Marston to have it, but I cannot 
bear to see him, and I cannot tell him what 
Richard said. I wish you would tell him. 
I wish you would make him know that it 
was the drink, and only the drink ; that of 
himself the father of my boy would never 
have fallen so low.” 

“Yes, yes, dear friend, I understand, and 
I will make it understood by Mr. Marston, 
and no one else ever need know.” And 
with a grateful look Martha went out at one 
door as Mr. Marston entered by the other. 


The Loose Ends Gathered Up. 261 

“ Ernest said you were coming up, and I 
thought the old sorrel and the gig would 
like the honor of taking you ; so here we 
are," said Mr. Marston. And Mrs. Thorne 
went with him, though she had hard work 
to escape from Nellie and Walter and 
Tommy, each of whom vied with the other 
for the last kiss and word. Nellie at last 
retreated, with a reminder that she was to 
make a visit to New York in the Christmas 
holidays, and Tommy climbed into the 
chaise and cuddled down against the dash- 
board, and Walter hung on behind. At the 
foot of the first hill both small escorts were 
dismissed, and as the two went jogging on 
in the autumn sunshine Mrs. Thorne told 
Mr. Marston of the message and the money 
Martha had sent by her. 

“ I do not know that I ought to tell what 
I wish to tell you," he said, thoughtfully, 
sobering his horse to a walk and slowly 
striking off the heads of the golden rod with 
the long lash of his whip. “I know all 
about Mrs. Gilbert's past life, and you 


262 


One Little Life. 


ought to know ; but I have been silent be- 
cause she seemed to wish me not to speak 
of it. But I can trust you, I am sure, and I 
want you to help me to help her, for she 
will not allow me to do it by myself. 

Her father was a New England clergy- 
man of the old Calvinistic type. He married 
twice. His first wife was the widow of a mer- 
chant who had left her a large fortune and one 
son. When she died she left the clergyman 
the guardian of her son, whom he sent to 
college, and then saw placed in the business 
house in which his mother’s fortune had 
been made. The lad’s mother left him 
a generous share in her estate, and in time 
he married again. This time he chose a 
poor girl, and Martha was their only child. 
Her father was a good man, but his religion 
was as austere as his integrity. The re- 
straints were less felt by the step-son, who 
was much absent ; but the daughter chafed 
under them, and said her father was so fear- 
ful she would not be happy in the next 
world that he would never allow her a 


The Loose Ends Gathered Up. 263 

pleasure in this. She became interested in 
Richard Gilbert ; a young man of brilliant 
talent, a law-student, but even then given to 
habits of dissipation. The very recklessness 
of the man seemed to attract her. The re- 
action of her mind against restraint swung 
her away over to liking of any body who 
did as he pleased, without fear of God or 
man. Still, if her father had known how to 
be kind he could have held her, for she has 
a heart capable of passionate love and fidel- 
ity. She has proven her power of love in 
her care for son, and her fidelity in her 
care for that miserable man. But her 
father, instead of trying to understand her. 
told her if she had any thing more to do 
with Gilbert the property he meant to leave 
her, and which came from his former wife 
to him, should go back to the son. Of 
course she married the man after that, if 
only to show she scorned the money. She 
ran away w'ith him, and, though the son 
tried his best, he could not keep trace of 
them for any length of time. Her father 


264 One Little Life. 

never forgave her. Dyings he left the 
money to the son, who offered it to her, 
but, proud and indignant, she refused it, 
and, moving from place to place, finally 
evaded all search. Then the money was in- 
vested. It has grown through the years. 
It waits for her and her boy. It has been 
repeatedly urged upon her, but, with curious 
obstinacy, she says she will not have it for 
herself. After she is gone the boy may do 
as he will. To her it would be like taking 
w^t her father would keep from her if he 
could reach a hand out of the grave to grasp 
it. Possibly you could persuade her that 
she is now such a woman as her father 
would approve, but I doubt if she can ever 
be induced to use the money for herself. 
She may be induced to use it in some scheme 
for doing good, such as she feels her father 
would approve." 

“ But would not that be fobbing Rich- 
ard ? " asked Mrs. Thorne. 

“ Not if Richard agreed with his mother, 
which I think he will. He would if he 


f 


The Loose Ends Gathered Up. 265 

knew his own future. But I am inclined 
to think he will in any case. Ernest has 
already made such plans for Dick as will 
make money of small importance to the lad, 
and is only waiting to know if they seem 
wise to you and in accord with your plans for 
your general work. But I am sure he will 
like better to speak to you of them himself. 
He is growing very fond of Richard, and 
I think, poor fellow, he knows his own work 
cannot last very long. Every year his strength 
grows less. If a spirit like his can take 
possession of physical forces like those of. 
Richard he feels there will be then the full 
stature of a man in Christ Jesus. For that 
he is watching, and for that Richard’s de- 
velopment is giving him reason to hope. 
Then, besides, after Edith, Richard, though 
not really related by blood to him, is his 
nearest of kin.” 

‘^Then I am right in supposing that 
Martha belongs to you ? ” 

“ Yes, more than to any one else. We 
had the same home in our youth. And 


266 


One Little Life. 

her father was a good man, but I did not 
learn till long after I left him the lesson 
Martha says she never even began to learn 
till the night Gladys kissed her. I mean 
the lesson that love to God means loving- 
kindness to our fellow-men, and serving 
God means service to his creatures.” 

“Father says he came near spoiling my 
pleasure in laying before you my plans for 
Dick,” said Ernest, as he lay, languid and 
feeble, on his sofa before the open fire. 
“They have only been waiting for your 
approval.” 

The autumn air was chill, the forests one 
glowing mosaic of crimson and gold, and 
between the fiame of the fire and the flam- 
ing gold of the birches beside the porch 
Ernest’s face seemed already transfigured, 
and to belong to one of the veritable chil- 
dren of the light. 

“You know how I feel about going home, 
dear friend,” he said, reaching out a hand 
which the summer had made thinner, and 
laying it on Mrs. Thorne’s. “You know 


The Loose Ends Gathered Up. 267 

the joy of my whole life has been in helping 
you to waken other hearts to help the world. 
I believe the Master will widen the work 
and deepen the joy after I get away from 
this prison-house of pain ; but I want my 
little portion to go on here below in stronger 
hands. I have chosen Richard, and I be- 
lieve the Master has chosen him too ; for his 
whole heart seems kindling with sympathy 
and power. And you have chosen Gladys 
Gray to help you here, to take your place 
when you are gone. I do not think she will 
marry, though if I had been a man instead 
of this wreck that I am,” he added, a faint 
shade of bitterness passing over his face, “I 
believe God would have given her to me. 
She will never know how T have watched and 
dreamed of her and loved her, and she will 
never know till I am gone that she loved 
me. And no one will ever know it except 
you, you blessed mother of us all,” he added, 
raising himself by her hand, and bringing 
his face close to hers. “ But you will see it 
in her face and hear it in her voice, and 


268 


One Little Life. 


she will suddenly cease to be a child. Then 
tell her that, because I want to work with 
her in all your blessed work in the future, I 
have left her two thirds of all the fortune 
my mother left to me, and to Richard the 
other third. Edith will take my share of 
father’s property, and she and Dick may 
work together some day. Who can tell ? 

** But it is not for them at first,” he added, 
after he had rested a moment, ‘‘but all for 
you and for your work, so long as you live, 
with this thought : that you shall guard and 
guide and teach them as you are doing now, 
and as you taught me ; that you shall use 
their strength and help whenever you can, 
and that when you come home to heaven, if 
they have proved worthy, they shall be the 
two to carry on what is begun. I know you 
have no lack of money,” he went on, as she 
began to speak ; “ yet you have so often told 
me that it is burned into my very life that 
it is not money that is needed to save the 
world, but the Heart of love working in 
human hearts. To plant — to nourish — this 


The Loose Ends Gathered Up. 269 

seems the work chosen for you. You did it 
for me. You are doing it for these. Till it 
is done I know you will hold the trust, if not 
for love of me, for love of Christ.” 

“For love of Christ and love of you!” 
she whispered, solemnly, bending a moment 
above his pillow and leaving there a moth- 
er’s kiss. Then she turned away hurriedly 
to hide the tears that, notwithstanding her 
self-control, were quite too near her eyes. 

There is a fine brick building sur- 
* rounded by lovely play-grounds on the site 
of the old house on the meadow, and wide 
farm lands and various workshops beside 
the stream. It is a home-school for city 
waifs. And above its gate is written, “ For 
love of Christ.” 

There is a temperance house, with library 
and reading-rooms, and gardens, sloping to 
the stream, boats on the river, and a gym- 
nasium and lyceum hall, at Bentley Four 
Corners, and over the platform of the hall 
is written, “ For love of Christ.” 


270 One Little Life. 

There are two rooms hired and paid for 
in hundreds of tenement-houses in many 
cities, and in one room are music and 
games and pictures and books, and growing 
plants and spotless curtains, and easy-chairs 
for mothers to hold their babies, and a free 
welcome to all the dwellers in the house. 
It is the common resting-place and parlor 
for all who come. In the other room at 
certain hours of the day and evening a 
woman sits to hear and answer the tale of 
any weary heart in all that house. She is 
not a detective, not even a directress, only 
a ‘‘friend.” Into her safe keeping come 
the mother’s anxieties, the young girl’s 
temptation, the boy's struggles, and out of 
that room the sad go comforted and the 
weak go strengthened, and the sinful go re- 
solved to try. once more. 

And deep in . the heart of these friends is 
written the love of Christ. 

And away in another part of the city in a 
pleasant upper chamber come together now 
and then groups of these friends to talk 


The Loose Ends Gathered Up 271 

over, with one gentle woman — who has 
found them all simply by being to each a 
friend — their efforts and successes and 
hopes and failures and fears. Like fagots 
gathered among the dead boughs of desert 
forests they bring their fragments, gathered 
in homes and lives that are barren of all 
green and beautiful things. Laid on the 
flaming altar of one woman’s heart, all that 
should be unspoken and forgotten burns 
away, and a pure flame goes up warming 
desolate lives for the love of Christ. 

And away in India, one of the most de- 
voted workers in the mission field, sun- 
burned and happy, is Pastor Gray; changed 
without as well as within, and working for 
souls as they only work whose love of self 
has been lost in love for Christ. 

And moving quietly from bed to bed in 
a hospital for sick children, that stands so 
near the sea that they go to sleep every 
night to the sound of its throbbing, is 
Martha Gilbert; the true mother in this 

home built by the money she would not use 
18 


272 


One Little Life. 


for herself. And the sea that sings onlylul- 
labys to the children says all the time to her 
in gentle monotone, “For love of Christ.” 

And all over the country good works like 
these are going on, wrought by those who 
belong in this blessed fellowship of service. 
And the clasp that binds the many links is 
in the hands of one gentle woman on whom 
has fallen the mantle of “the friend.” 

There are two graves in the little Prot- 
estant cemetery that lies close under the 
ancient wall of Rome. If you push away 
the ivy from one head-stone you will find it 
bears no name. There is the date 1882 
and two little words, “Our Friend.” Across 
the other a plain cross lies, and between the 
grasses that creep over the letters the Ro- 
man sun shines down upon : 

ERNEST, 

“a servant of JESUS CHRIST.” 

1876. 


THE END. 



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